


Not Quite Stardust

by hiltaire



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, LGBTQ Themes, LMBB, Les Mis Big Bang, Multi, NB: Characters are listed in order of appearance; not importance, NB: The narrative is very Cloud Atlas in style, NB: This story is social-justice-heavy, NB: While this contains a lot of history it is not history-heavy, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Supernatural Elements, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-21 01:45:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2450093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiltaire/pseuds/hiltaire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a theory that humans evolved the way they did for a reason. As they fell to Earth, people once revered the stars as angels and gods, allowed them to live amongst them, or ignored them. Humanity changed, growing self-involved, sceptical and disengaged with the skies above. The stars didn’t change.</p><p>Some of Les Amis (& Co.) were stars; Bahorel supped with Charles II of England, Montparnasse was sentenced to hang by the neck until dead, Jean Prouvaire held favour with Oscar Wilde, Courfeyrac stormed Normandy, Marius was Canadian, Jean Valjean sold apples, and Grantaire crash landed in the middle of the English Channel. Their stories intersected on occasion, bonds made and broken at the drop of a hat, and forming new alliances with humans and those who could see them for what they were.</p><p>But sometimes there happens an event so rare and unprecedented that the course of social and historical norms is altered forever. Encountering old ‘acquaintances’, stumbling through the wrong door, forming a social justice group, all of it can change a person’s path. Convergence of lives, however? That can change everything, and not just for one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Quite Stardust

**Author's Note:**

> I'd just like to thank my beta, Sadira (tumblr: partybyron), for being so amazing throughout this.
> 
> Fanmix (by Tommy/tumblr: theydieholdinghands) can be found here: http://8tracks.com/asterhythm/the-stars-above-would-take-pity

**Pre-History Preface**

Once upon a time, before the time of humans, stars fell to Earth as they pleased and walked amongst the dinosaurs and woollen mammoths. Well. Until too many of them fell at one time and the sheer mass of burning in the stratosphere and craters upon the ground led to the extinction of the dinosaurs.

For as long as there have been stars, they have fallen. In fact, modern theories from media-dubbed ‘crazy star fanatics’ even purport that it was stars who chose to stay on Earth and be tethered for the rest of their days that led the environment to adapt in a way that would certainly ensure the predecessors of humanity would evolve _just so_. In any case, the stars have always fallen, for a variety of reasons.

First: a star could have elected to fall for whatever reason – curiosity, frustration, wonder… If they elect to fall, typically they can remain for however long they wish to.

Second: a star could have been wrenched from their place in the sky, when what they saw below tugged something within them, a sense of yearning that caused them to tip, crashing to Earth. If they have no decision in their falling, they cannot physically return to the sky until they have absolved the reason they fell. Tough luck for those who don’t know why they fell.

Now, let’s get one thing clear. Stars are, in the most general of terms, an observational species. Their primary function is to remain, impartially, in the sky. Hence why too much temptation to interfere or be part of humanity is for the stars who fall, and _not_ those in the sky.

That’s not to say that the stars don’t _care_ about what happens on Earth. They care. It just so happens that they only care about their own – other stars. It is for that reason that a star will find their place, not die when they’re mortally wounded, or be compelled to seek out stars in their area who have just burned a crater into the ground; cosmic influence beyond human control is often at play in such cases. This has been the case for centuries. It wasn’t always that way, though. Once, humans and stars walked side by side, and the stars were revered, feared, and accepted in equal measures – ever heard of angels?

Humans cannot tell who is a star and who is not, regardless of how much the stars glow. Yes, stars glow. It is only when they are at their brightest – when they are serene to the point of finding their centre, and content in doing so – that humans can even catch a glimpse of the light. It helps humans that stars have a small white mark on the inside of their left wrist, however, in the shape of a star.

There exist those who can see the stars no matter how bright they’re glowing. These are the Starchildren, but ever since humanity stopped believing that stars are stars, and the stars consequently slowed in their falls, the Starchildren have begun to lose their Sight (and the peculiar feeling they get when a star is falling). They still have it to begin with, it’s just...with stars as a myth, it’s hard to keep hold of what sets you apart.

The stars never stopped falling.

* * *

**1605**

‘Remember, remember, the fifth of November, the gunpowder, treason and plot.’

Bahorel certainly would.

Guy Fawkes and his merry band of anarchists had set about to blow up the English buildings of parliament. They had been stopped, but…it was still exciting enough for Bahorel to elect to make his way down the proverbial and celestial slip ‘n’ slide to the world commonly known by inhabitants as…Earth.

In a few decades’ time, he would find himself being the first to coin the term ‘cavalier’ to describe supporters of the English kings, Charles I and Charles II during the English Civil War. He would come to act upon the stage briefly, and he would come to fight. Most notably, however, he would come to frequent the courts, exchanging camaraderie with Charles II of England, contenting himself with the petting of spaniels and nobles alike. Not in the same way. Bestiality was illegal then as well as it is in modern times. Thankfully.

* * *

**1732**

Curiosity killed the cat but satisfaction brought it back. It was, indeed, a saying that would, in time, like many others of its sort, become warped in meaning through omission of key words. At the time of night around midsummer in 1732, however, Montparnasse had every intention of becoming fully satisfied with this curious place referred to as ‘London’. When he slunk down from the skies, he was set daintily down a little outside the city, barely leaving a mark in the sky or a depression in the ground. It tormented him for many a night from then on; that he’d been set down like a china doll, rather than with the majestic flare many of his brethren had famously been permitted.

Perhaps it was the near-silence of his arrival that set him on the path he would follow for years to come. Indeed, had he scorched the sky with flame and dented the planet, he may have scared off the highwaymen who were robbing a carriage on the road that lay a little beyond the trees from whence he emerged.

The glamour of the highwaymen had always enthralled him, ever since they came into existence. They were by no means celebrities, but they were certainly infamous to the point of being quasi-worshipped, with charisma that led them to becoming the crowd favourite on the hanging schedule.

On that eve, Montparnasse saw his first robbery.

On that eve, Montparnasse saw his first gunshot wound to the uncooperative carriage occupants.

He wanted more.

**1738**

In the too warm, English summer weather, made only too worse by the stench and festering of London’s finest vermin and criminals, though to many, the difference was almost impossible to tell. The depth of his pockets partially relieved Montparnasse’s stay in Newgate prison, at least. He had paid good money for the easement of his chains, the ability to walk around, decent food, and, most importantly, a private room. But none of these privileges did anything for the smell or the squeaks and scratches at night.

He had pleaded guilty for over two hundred and thirty counts of highway robbery, twenty-two of assault, and five of murder, and all with a dazzling smile upon his face. The people had loved him, the anti-hero of the night, making the streets unsafe for the gentry. He was infamous, glamorous, and all eyes, high- and low-born were upon him.

Tonight, the night before he was sentenced to hang by the neck until dead, at the gallows at Tyburn, Montparnasse turned his eyes, ears and lips up towards the sky. Wordlessly, he requested access. He frowned, concentrating harder.

Then he screamed tirelessly, shoving the palms of his hands against the walls and clawing at them until his nails splintered and broke. He screamed until his throat was raw, and he screamed some more, until all that came out was a gasp and a whimper. None of this was heard above the cries of his fellow inmates.

Montparnasse had been locked out of the skies for his crimes until such a time that he atoned for his actions and regained the purity that came with absolute serenity.

He couldn’t go home.

Sentenced to die the next day and he couldn’t go home.

As if by some higher power, the guard had had too much to drink and slumbered close by to Montparnasse’s cell, keys within his reach. He smiled bitterly to himself.

The following morning, Montparnasse was on a ship bound for the New World. It was a new start. All the stars could hope was that on his journeys he would return to them. All he could hope was that the ship would go down and he would drown for all eternity, and through his suffering, that the stars above would take pity on him.

* * *

**1775-1783**

Bahorel went with the English to fight the American rebels. The primary reason for his newfound ‘patriotism’ was for shits and giggles, but he was good at what came with such a thing. Bahorel had a quick tongue.

Perhaps, had he not volunteered to watch a captured rebel soldier, he would not have concluded that the American side of the war would, if they won, yield more opportunistic results. So he defected.

**1781**

_A Thursday Morning, Mid-October (GMT-5)_

“They went this way!” hollered a cockney accent as Bahorel and his fellow revolutionaries fled through the woods.

“Scatter—“ came the command, and just like that, Bahorel was left on his own as Americans did exactly as told; they scattered.

“Oh, bloody fucking bollocks,” he muttered to himself, but couldn’t help the grin that took over his face as he felt adrenaline rushing to his brain, making his heart pound like war drums, rising in a crescendo typically known as excitement. Bahorel took off through the woods, ducking here and leaping there. Part of him wondered if the reason he hadn’t tripped yet was because the stars above didn’t want him to, well, die, and was that even possible? He didn’t know. Oh, well! Without the temptation of lady fate, lady luck would be left without a bedmate!

When the sounds of boots and gunfire and shouting grew quieter, then and only then did Bahorel allow himself the pleasure of looking over his shoulder. He did not slow when he saw he was alone, however, preferring to maintain the charade of being under pursuit. What was a revolution without excitement anyway?

Lady fate had been tipped. Bahorel tipped also - forwards, in fact, and over a tree root. He scrambled to his feet, but the slowing of his movements caused him to take in his surroundings. Ah! A house! Excellent. Somewhat more flimsy than those he’d expect to find lying around in certain areas of England, but it would do the trick. Besides, entering gave him a chance of happening upon fresh company. So he did.

Bahorel knocked twice upon the door and raised his firearm as he turned the handle, opening the door anyway and stepping over the threshold. No sooner had he done so, however, than did his ears begin to ring and a rent in his flesh tore his favourite shirt. He staggered, putting his hand to the wound with wide eyes. This was by no means the first time he’d been shot, but it was the first time it had occurred so…so…rudely…

* * *

Montparnasse narrowed his eyes at the revolutionary soldier who now slumped to the floor. He rather liked these new-fangled firearms; they were significantly less messy than those of the 1600s. He lowered his weapon and stood from his comfortable place beside the fire.

“Oh…bollocks…” he breathed out. He recognised that glow. It wasn’t only from the light behind this man who seemed to be a star as well as him. Montparnasse sighed heavily, casting his eyes upwards. “You’re punishing me, aren’t you?” In five swift steps, he had closed the door and now stood above the soldier who was bleeding all over his floor. Montparnasse nudged him with his foot. “Stop playing dead,” he demanded. “I can see you glowing.”

The star on his floor groaned, and then chuckled. The bleeding already slowing, he propped himself up on his elbow and, flipping hair that had fallen from its ponytail out of his eyes, pouted mock-demurely up at Montparnasse. “This was my favourite shirt,” he lamented.

Montparnasse’s face must have given away how much he cared for his own clothes, and quickly too, for no sooner had he drawn a breath and made to answer, than the star grinned winningly, rolling onto his back and holding his hand up to shake. “I’m Bahorel.”

“Sod off.”

* * *

**1815**

All Hallow’s, or All Saint’s day, celebrated on the first of November, was always a highly traditional celebration of honouring the dead. Even in France, with traces and hints of Romanticism billowing in the air, like flowery death and beautiful skulls transformed into wind and sent howling into the ears of poets. It was a metaphor.

The night before All Hallow’s day (All Hallow’s Eve, so to speak), Jean Prouvaire tumbled gracefully to a cliff edge, where he stood precariously, sleeves flouncing in the rain and breeze as waves whipped up a storm around him. The first week he spent in a dream, holding his arms out against the sun and moon and marvelling in the world. This was the perfect time for Jean Prouvaire.

**1892**

_Summer_

The only truly vexing thing about being a star, Jehan mused in his current state of debauchery, was that while human poets and authors and artists and philosophers could indulge in mind-altering vices, it took significantly more of the thing for it to affect him. Of course, if he elected to spend his time in a place of any repute at all, they would raise eyebrows and refuse to allow him a single part more of such vices, in order to stop him from ‘passing out’ or ‘dying’, similar to the looks of alarm upon his brothers’ faces as he was shot in the throat and stomach during the 1832 June Rebellion.

On the plus side, keeping company with starchildren allowed for private over-indulgence, wherein small gatherings of ‘those in the know’ would not deny him more than a human could handle. This was one such gathering, and it had left him with proverbial stars in his eyes. Jehan had met Oscar Wilde.

* * *

**1914**

_14 th of February, 20:00 (GMT-5)_

As far as fallings went, the fall of the Courfeyrac was relatively painless. In fact, on a scale of screaming and burning to sliding down a helter-skelter slide, the fall of the Courfeyrac could aptly have been described, in comparative terms, as a musical sequence, tap dancing with a cane and a top hat and sparkly gloves, down a spiral staircase, complete with pirouettes and back-up dances.

The Courfeyrac’s landing, on the other hand, left much to be desired, landing (and promptly semi-sinking) in a squelchy and mostly brown patch of grass, with the odd cow milling around. Wriggling around, he wrinkled his nose. It was probably a good thing no craters had been burned with his fall; the stench of manure and the cowpat not two inches from his foot alone would have mixed horrendously with the scorching aroma of craterdom.

Wasn’t he supposed to have company? Courfeyrac sat up, looking around. Ah, yes, the disgruntled-looking fellow staring intently at the ground as he picked his way towards him. The recently fallen star sat quite patiently, and in a surprisingly dignified manner, considering the mud in his hair.

“I had a date, asshole!” blustered the star painstakingly making his way over to Courfeyrac, pinching the legs of his slacks and holding the hems away from the rain-wetted field.

Courfeyrac grinned, “Sorry, it’s my boner, man! I’ll make it up to you!”

His ride finally reached him, eyeing their surroundings with an air of simultaneous unease and disgust. “How?” he snapped, but, placing a pristine handkerchief in his hand, offered the covered hand to Courfeyrac, to help him up. “She had legs up to here…Swore it was Val’s day or nothing.”

“Well…” Courfeyrac blithely batted his eyelashes as he took the proffered hand and pulled himself into a standing position. “ _I_ could take you out. The name’s Courfeyrac.”

“Sidney…?”

Poor fellow, sounded almost lost. His shift in demeanour had come about just as suddenly as Courfeyrac had propositioned him and Courfeyrac adjusted accordingly. “Sorry, man, boners everywhere, huh? You’re not interested, I’m a big boy and I can handle it. Let’s just get out of this field, hm?”

Sidney stared, befuddled at him for another few seconds before nodding. “Sure, okay, yeah—Sorry, it’s this way.”

And off they went, to the brave new world. This would be a year of challenges, assassinations, and the beginnings of war. Courfeyrac would adapt, like the kitten he would come to be known as. All would be well.

**1920s**

Courfeyrac eyed his surroundings with an appraising eye. Drop skirts and hair-feathers were among his new favourites. He also particularly enjoyed the dancing. It was beautiful. It gave him light and hope after the war that had devastated millions. The world was broken and filled with despair, but there was also this.

* * *

**1930**

_1 st of August, 14:17 (GMT-5)_

The Empire State Building was making fast progress in a general skyward direction. Most of the other workers were exhausted, even a little anxious about being up so high, but Courfeyrac? Courfeyrac thrived off it. In a way, being high up like this made him feel closer to his roots in these troubled times. He whistled a happy tune that he’d learnt in the Great War, tipping his hat at a starchild who had handed him a wrench with a reverent glow in his eye earlier. The signet ring with a cat on it that he’d won in a gamble just a few years earlier glinted in the sun as he wiped the sweat off his brow and stepped up his game; nobody was whistling along. Obviously, he had to sing.

_“Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag, and smile…smile…smile…”_

* * *

**1931**

_28 th of February, 21:12 (GMT-5)_

Falling without causing a fuss was harder than it looked when his star brethren did it, Jean Valjean thought to himself as he concentrated very hard on why he wanted to go, and why he desperately needed to not be seen falling. Really, it was a wonder in itself that the stars hadn’t already banished him for being ‘unstarlike’, which really meant ‘not aloof enough’. Given how many times he’d used what influence he could to attempt to sway the balance towards being more fair on the citizens of Earth, this was unsurprising. Florence Nightingale? One of his. It was true, he was a benevolent soul – and people were struggling to even feed their families in America. Tipping the scales wasn’t enough, not this time. He had to help them himself.

* * *

**1941**

_12 th of January, 05:00 (GMT-8)_

The London Blitz was a fatal one for many, even near the beginning. One hundred and eleven civilian people had died on the night of the 11th. It was war. Marius Pontmercy had been in love with one. She was so beautiful… He had watched her from the sky, her auburn locks falling in the ringlets of the time, and with a voice that could coax a tortoise from its shell. There were freckles upon her nose. Irish, he recalled, as he hurtled towards the ground with grief in his heart. She had gone to London to provide for her family.

The stars do not drop one of their own into an active war zone.

Marius Pontmercy awoke to lumberjacks and maple syrup. Marius Pontmercy awoke to Canada. Marius wept.

* * *

**1944**

_6 th of June, 06:20 (GMT+1)_

One of the men near him was clutching his dog tags. Another was singing the White Cliffs of Dover in wavering undertones. A small group of men were huddled as close as they were able to, and fervently prayed underneath their breath.

There was a chill set in the air as they cut through the waves, on their way to the beaches of Normandy, but Courfeyrac kept a confident smile on his face. Why? Because there were two fellas, barely seventeen, must have lied on the enlistment forms, staring at the glow that perpetually surrounded him and visibly drawing strength from it. He kissed the signet ring he wore with his dog tags now, just for luck, and brightened.

**1946**

_Summer_

The war was over and Courfeyrac had lost his signet ring. He frowned, still disgruntled if he was being completely honest about it, but continued on his holiday through Canada. It seemed like a good idea at the time. He just didn’t expect his holiday souvenir to be one Marius Pontmercy.

He’d walked into the little shop, practically in the middle of nowhere, and been immediately struck by such a downtrodden glow from the salesman that he had to take him under his wing, he just had to. Then he’d heard his story, with the girl who died and how nobody had come for him, and how he had fallen without wanting to and now had no way back…

Courfeyrac had to admit it, since the war was over, he’d started to grow lonelier, more tired. Today was the first day in a long time that the fog lifted. Maybe if he kept Marius with him, they could be friends. Maybe the fog would lift.

* * *

**1972**

_29 th of February, 00:22 (GMT-5)_

She had been in labour for hours, one wrist handcuffed to the hospital bed while staff chanted the words; “Breathe, Gaurige!” “Push, inmate!” “Push!”

She let out one final, godawful scream, like a banshee tearing the brains of intruders apart with sound waves alone. They could probably hear her all the way in A-Block.

It was worth it. The baby was born inside a jail, but it was worth it.

* * *

**1974**

_6 th of April, 21:54 (GMT+1)_

People were fascinating, she thought to herself from her seat in the sky as the Swedish pop group (‘ABBA’, was it?) performed their winning song for the human viewers of the Eurovision Song Contest. For some peculiar reason, Musichetta found herself wanting to hear more of them.

* * *

**1976**

_19 th of April, 18:02 (GMT+1)_

The Normandy beaches were picturesque as balls, the tumultuous sea set to rumbling skies. It was really quite Romantic, Jehan thought, jutting her chin out as she let the sand slip past her bare feet. Her maxi skirt fluttered around her ankles, sandals discarded a way back. What she did have with her was an assortment of clothing. Those new age humans she’d encountered had the right idea; expression led to identity, and who was she to force whomever it was who should fall into clothing that they did not feel themselves in? Abso-fucking-lutely. No one at all.

She did, however, keep her eyes turned downward. These were sombre grounds, and while she couldn’t physically feel the footsteps of those who had gone before her, she could imagine the hail of gunfire. She had sat out fighting in the Second World War, instead devoting her time to sheltering and hiding the hunted, which was, in itself, its own fight. But not one of the families she cared for were caught, and for that, she could hold her chin up high and—cold!

Jehan had stood on something _very_ cold and she paused in her wander to the shore to furrow her brow at the sand before stooping and scooping up whatever it was that lay beneath the surface. A signet ring was what she found, with an ornate kitten upon it. She smiled, slipping the ring into a side-pocket of her bag before she felt it.

It was like a cartoon hook had come out from off-stage and gripped her by the throat, forcing her to take a step forwards and tugging her face up towards the sky. This was it. It was time.

* * *

He had known that fixating would put him in danger again, in danger of falling.

They had warned him.

He had heeded their cautions before.

But that wall…

Those people…

They needed— He had to— Somebody needed to—He _had_ to—

He’d heard stories about what it was like to fall, not of your own volition, and they were right. It was like being turned inside out again and again, each time renewing and each time burning up physically and emotionally as you plummeted. They were right. They were right.

Fire, fire, fire, fire, fire, fire, fire, fire, worth it? Worth it? Worth it? Worth it? Fire, fire, fire, fire, WET!???!?!??

* * *

Jehan winced in sympathy as the flames brightened and extinguished with a crash and a bang that was echoed by thunder when the star hit the English Channel. She sighed. There was a part of her who had hoped that the star would perhaps be one who _decided_ to fall, and therefore be gifted with the opportunity to elect where to land. Then, at least, there would have been a chance she would be back at her house by dinner. Oh well, it couldn’t be helped.

She sat upon the sand and let the tiny fossilised remains of a world that had once been melt between her splayed fingers. It was all that she could do to lie down and wait. The star would be washed to the nearest shoreline and she was reasonably certain that in this case, it was hers. This thought brought a small smile to her face; solitude was an intriguing thing, but there had to be new perspectives. With any luck, this one would be of cliffs and tragedy and everything beautiful in the world. One could only hope.

Hours later, there was a disturbance, a sodden crunching noise, the sound of footsteps underwater. Jehan opened her eyes and sat up, glow beginning to thrum gently in excitement. This was it, this was the star coming closer, and this was it! This was…it?

The star’s glow was almost entirely turned inwards, a sign of distress and despair. Jehan scrambled to her feet, surging towards them and taking them in her arms. The star sobbed openly, and would have crashed to the beach floor if it weren’t for Jehan’s upper body strength.

“Hey…” she whispered, combing fingertips through dense dark curls. “Hey, it’s okay. You’ve fallen, but it’s okay. You’re not alone down here.”

“I didn’t—“ responded the star, before dissolving into hiccups and tears once more.

“I know. I’m Jehan,” Jehan prompted, slipping an arm around the star’s midriff and ducking beneath their armpit to haul them towards her bag. Falling could be exhausting.

The star sniffled quietly, but managed a reply, “Grantaire…”

* * *

**1977**

_30 th of March, 09:01 (GMT-6)_

The baby cried. The mother died.

“There’s no father. Did she name her?” the midwife questioned her assistant.

“Yeah. After her grandmother, she said. Fantine.”

The midwife clucked her tongue, swaddling baby Fantine. “Poor child…”

* * *

_24 th of November, 16:54 (GMT+1)_

“You’re going out again?”

“Oui.”

“Soup kitchen?”

“Oui.”

Grantaire left the small house he and Jehan shared with a few hippies, donning a slightly holey but still thick coat with a hood as snow fell from the sky. Having been here for over a year now, it was somewhat representative of his state, the coat. He wanted to help. So he did. He didn’t have a job – didn’t need one – but he had numerous placements with volunteer-work and the like, keeping him out of the house, keeping him helping to make at least their little town a better place. It was getting harder, though. Every day, another new person came to the kitchen, or one less person turned up at the shelter. He didn’t know which was worse; a fresh face screwed over by the system to the extent that they needed help, or another person who couldn’t survive it. It was getting harder and nobody could do a thing to stop it, like a terminal illness, a social and economic plague, and one with no end in sight. It was getting harder.

**1989**

_30 th of January, 17:14 (GMT+1)_

This was fucking awful. Jehan’s mouth pinched into a thin line and they rubbed their hands up and down their biceps. It had been almost ten years since Grantaire had stopped going to the soup kitchen, almost eight since he’d started drinking. They couldn’t really get drunk the same way as humans could, but still he tried, and sometimes, if he got his hands on strong enough poison and drank it quick enough, he could black out a few hours of this life he had deemed so pointless. He was perfectly cheerful around their acquaintances, but Jehan saw him all the time. They could pinpoint the precise moment when Grantaire decided he didn’t have to put in the effort of appeasement, and it was times such as this, when their world view blackened to the same extent as his, that they curled up on the couch and waited for Grantaire to emerge from his room.

He did, eventually, holding onto a bottle of Everclear that a guy they met brought back from travels to America had gifted the two wandering stars – if you could call them that. Grantaire sagged onto the couch, with half of him now draped over Jehan, and offered them the bottle.

“You look like you could do with forgetting that the glorious, beautiful world that you could leave at any time but I appear to be stuck on, is filled with hideous representations of mankind whose sole aspirations in what they call life seem to be making money and killing babies,” he said, by way of explanation.

Jehan took the bottle with a little snort. “Poetic, as always, mon ami,” they murmured, pressing a kiss to his hair as they perused the Everclear. Their eyebrows shot up. 190-proof? Honestly, that did sound good right about now. They took a swig and handed the bottle back to Grantaire.

“Merci,” Grantaire turned his head to press his mouth to the side of Jehan’s knee in return, lifting the bottle aloft in a gesture of cheers. He didn’t drink, though, not lying down. They lapsed into silence, a comfortable one comprised primarily of mutual despair and grief.

“We should go there,” Jehan eventually murmured.

Grantaire made a small ‘hm’ noise in question.

“To America,” they clarified.

“The land of the free and home of the brave…” mused Grantaire. “I hear capitalism is rife and there’re cities that’d take no shame in burning you at the stake for the colour of your skin.”

Jehan tsked. “That’s a chance I’m willing to take. I hear they’re getting more liberal. More free to be, like the motif dictates.”

Grantaire was quiet for a long moment. Jehan almost thought the discussion was over.

Then, “Alright.”

* * *

_20 th of March, 19:01 (GMT-5)_

They wouldn’t have noticed him, if it hadn’t been for the crying as they put out the trash. As it were, Mr and Mrs Wiech, a good old couple – poor, but good – hadn’t any children of their own. Whoever left this one must have looked around. It was better to entertain this than to think they’d left him on any old doorstep to die.

Mrs Wiech picked him up as Mr Wiech struggled to read the note:

“Please take good care of him. I’m sorry I had to do this. He couldn’t stay where he would have been, it wouldn’t have been safe. I had no other choice, and I’m sorry. I’ve been calling him… Wait, hang on… Feee-uh-illy? Foilly? Foah-illy? Fee-yoilly?”

“Let me see that,” muttered Mrs Wiech, handing baby Feuilly to Mr Wiech and taking the note as she peered through her glasses. “Fuh-yee. It’s pronounced Fuh-yee.”

“Oh.”

* * *

_17 th of November, 13:13 (GMT-7)_

“He’s upside down?! Turn around, turn around, turn around!”

“Baby, I love you, but stop screaming at my baby’s ass!”

Twenty minutes later, they were bickering good-naturedly over what to call their child. It had to be something eagle related. They already knew his nickname, after all. Lesgle would be very cute. Until he learnt to say it, though, he could call himself Bossuet. Birth certificate schmirth certificate.

* * *

**1990**

_13 th of June, 13:14 (GMT)_

Babies were crying and whining left right and centre in the maternity wing of the rural Welsh hospital. Really, Mr and Mrs Combeferre oughtn’t to have been travelling, but they had been visiting family and the baby hadn’t been due for another three weeks after all.

They named their premature prince Gareth in honour of the country, in the hopes that he would live up to his name and become quite the civilised gentleman.

**1991**

_3 rd of May, 09:12 (GMT+9)_

The doctors were calm in this hospital, particularly so as the woman was delivering twins. She clutched her husband’s hand, having fought tooth and nail to get him in here. They muttered to each other in a mixture of French and Japanese, much of what she said being profanity and much of what he said being soothing.

The delivery room was one of mourning not long after. The second twin had been stillborn. The first was thriving, but as the father cradled his squirming child in his arms and offered the bundle of blankets to the mother, she turned her head away. They eventually named their only surviving child Claquesous. It had been what they would have named the twin that died.

* * *

_19 th of December, 14:37 (GMT-8)_

“Would you like to hold your little baby boy?” the nurse simpered, offering the child to the sweaty, exhausted woman in the hospital bed, who, looking delighted, immediately held her arms out to take the baby.

As if on cue, baby Joly started crying. Joly’s mother booped that teensy little nose, and, at the ensuing sneeze, the crying became wails. She looked up at the nurse, distraught. Was she ever to sleep again?

* * *

**1992**

_1 st of January, 10:00 (GMT-6)_

The nurses cooed at the baby being held in one of their number’s arms. What hair the child had was golden and fine, shimmering in the fluorescent lighting that the grand birthing suite did nothing for, the puppy fat on the baby’s cheeks serving to make it appear cherubic in appearance.

“A beautiful baby for a Happy New Year,” the nurse holding the baby smiled adoringly. “It’s a shame he isn’t tall and dark, huh? You know, like the superstition?”

Tittering nurses and doctors shook their heads good-naturedly at the jest, before the nurse turned towards the baby’s mother who sat pertly in the bed, as if she hadn’t just spent fourteen hours in labour.

“Would you like to hold him, Louisa?”

“It’s Mrs Enjolras,” responded Louisa Enjolras, blinking slowly and leaving no room for argument. “You’re not my friend, so do not address me by my forename. I would, however, like to hold my child.”

The disconcerted nurse handed the baby to its mother, and if she cooed, it was strictly off the record.

* * *

**1993**

_15 th of July, 21:45 (GMT-5)_

“Cosette,” affirmed a tearful Fantine, cradling her baby. Already she had the beginnings of the same reddish-brown curls and dusting of freckles as she did. All she had of her P.O.S. father was the shape of his eyes; Fantine could see that even a few moments after her birth. She was, but Fantine may have been biased, the most beautiful child she had ever seen.

They had to leave as soon as possible, however. The hospital bills would only begin to stack higher and higher if they didn’t.

* * *

            **1994**

_14 th of December, 22:00 (GMT-5)_

New York had, Jean Valjean concluded, changed little in the time he had spent here. Save for fashion. The man simply could not fathom precisely what was so appealing about the garish colouring choices that lingered from the eighties or the dirty look of the grunge, let alone the trend for pants that hung off today’s youth like they trailed anchors from their hems. It was truly bizarre.

He moved around the city a lot. He had to, of course – otherwise someone may have noticed a man unchanging for decades at a time. This neighbourhood was…interesting. And he’d only been here a week.

“Something you like?”

“No latex is extra.”

Ah yes. Jean Valjean had found the proverbial red light district.

It was the fifth woman with red lipstick to proposition him that made him take pause. Her lip quivered as she spoke and her hand shook as she dusted imaginary lint off his jacket. Her eyes were young – hardened, but young. She couldn’t have been older than eighteen.

“How old are you?” he asked her, as if he were coaxing a scared kitten from its hiding place.

The girl’s eyes flashed in fear, gaze snapping to his jacket, to his belt.

“I’m not a cop,” he reassured, the girl dragging her eyes back up to his face. “I guess you’re not legal yet, are you?”

She bit her lip and shook her head. “I’m seventeen,” she reluctantly admitted.

Valjean nodded his head in the direction of a streetlight and started to walk in the direction of it. After a few seconds, he heard the click of heels behind him as she followed him.

In the light, she looked younger. He felt his heart lurch with sympathy. “What do you charge?” he enquired politely.

The fear in her eyes was back. “I-I—“ she stammered out, unable to answer.

“I guess it doesn’t matter. I’ll pay for your company, but you don’t have to spend it with me. Consider it paid time off. Would that be okay?”

She nodded dumbly.

“Do you have somewhere warm to go?”

She shook her head.

“I see…it might be better if you accompanied me. I won’t ask you to do anything.” He just wanted to help her.

“I have a daughter,” the girl looked worried. “Would I still be allowed to…” She cleared her throat and coughed a few times. “Go with you…?”

Valjean inclined his head in acquiescence.

“What should I call you?” he enquired.

“Fa—Fantine…” Fantine twisted her mouth worriedly. “You?”

“Valjean. Jean Valjean.”

It was an amusing name, apparently, because a little smile played about Fantine’s mouth. But that was wiped away in seconds as her eyes glimmered. At least for tonight, she and her child would be warm.

* * *

**1995**

_29 th of August, 19:45 (GMT-5)_

“Why won’t she shut up? Make her shut up!”

Mr Thenardier snatched hours-old baby Éponine from his wife with a disgruntled grumble. He cradled her close to his chest, bouncing her up and down impatiently and sarcastically imitating her cries.

The nurse bustled in, and the parents’ demeanours instantly shifted, wailing turning into coos and snarls to smiles.

* * *

_25 th of December, 06:57 (GMT-5)_

“Mama! Papa! Wake up! It Christmas!”

Fantine smiled, turning her face in towards Jean’s chest as they lay beneath piles and piles of blankets – central heating was too much to afford – and two-and-a-half year old Cosette bounded into room, little feet pounding against the bare floorboards. He still remembered her first steps, though he’d been too late for the first whispered ‘mama’. It was okay, though, her voice was the first thing he heard every day – it was as if she rose with the sun, their little lark.

Jean kissed Fantine’s hair and sat up, holding his arms out for Cosette to dive into. She did, and he growled, play-pawing at her stomach and cheeks as she giggled, holding onto his arms and wriggling free, only to worm under the blankets with them and giggle quietly.

Yes, he decided, smiling up at the heavens and wrapping his arms around Fantine and Cosette. He could be happy with his little family.

**1996**

_14 th of August, 06:00 (GMT-5)_

Three years of this… Every day Jean Valjean woke up in his cell after a night spent wishing he was still with his family, jolted by the clang of the wake-up klaxon and the jarring orange of his uniform. He sprung out of bed, still rubbing sleep out of his eyes. What day was it? Yesterday had been potato salad day… It was Wednesday today. His posture immediately bettered – today was visiting day.

The prison guards sauntered up and down the rows of inmates, wandering in and out of their cells and checking them over for any trace of illegal objects or substances. Jean Valjean sighed, tuning them out and thinking only of his family. He would see them today, and so he could be content.

* * *

“Just walk up and down and look around and be generally menacing and you’ll be fine, newbie,” Javert’s supervisor slapped him on the back and sent him out to do his duty.

Javert’s eyes narrowed. There was no need to patronise him; he knew his duty.

He did his job, paying close attention to what he was doing, eyes zeroing in on anything that could have been illegal, but finding nothing. He swept on. Then he froze, his eyes drawn to—what was a star doing in prison? This had to be a mistake. As he his eyes around, he noted that it wouldn’t look out of place if he approached the man, so he did, jaw tightening further and further as he did so.

Clearing his throat, Javert frowned up at the star.

The star seemed startled, as if he’d been somewhere far away. “Sir?”

“What are you doing here?”

“What do you mean?” questioned the star. “I don’t think you’re supposed to know what we did to get arrested.”

Javert frowned harder. “You’re a star.”

It didn’t make sense. In all of the stories he’d heard, stars were the sentinels, unyielding and fair. They didn’t judge humans and they didn’t involve themselves in their affairs. He’d heard tale of one or two who had broken the law for their own amusement, but…stars had put in place some of the first structured laws mankind knew. There had to be some kind of explanation.

The star shook his head, smiling humbly. “My name is Jean Valjean.”

* * *

**1998**

_1 st of April, 10:08 (GMT-5)_

“Take a seat, Valjean,” the head warden ushered him into his office, heart sinking for what he was about to tell the man.

“Warden Dudchenko?” Valjean queried as he sat, visibly uneasy in this situation.

“It’s okay,” he reassured him, sighing heavily. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”

This was his least favourite thing about his job. Keeping order was fine and dandy, and concerns from prison representatives were easy enough to deal with. It was this that made him wish he’d gone into flower arranging. How did doctors do this? How did they tell someone their fiancée was dead? How did they tell them that their daughter was in the system? How did they do it?

His trashed office a few minutes later signified that he’d found a way.

* * *

_A few months later…_

Jean Valjean hung his head as he sat on his bunk. The next morning he would be transferred out, sentence extended. He wouldn’t be a free man until the millennium, and for what? Grief-fuelled lashing out and petty attempts at escape? Fantine was gone. He wasn’t getting her back. All he’d done for himself was lessen any chance he had at seeing Cosette again.

Someone cleared their throat a few feet away and Jean Valjean looked up, eyes red and puffy. It was that prison guard. Javert, he thought his name was. All he knew of him was that he was a starchild, and one who adhered to the law. If it weren’t for the conflicted look on his face, Valjean would have thought he thought himself better than him. He’d be right.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Valjean frowned. “Excuse me?”

“What are you doing here?”

When had he asked—Oh…

“I stole food for my family. They were starving.” A twinge of grief found its way into his voice.

Javert frowned, obviously working through that in his head and folding his arms. “You could have got a job. You’re a star.”

“I had a job.”

“But—“

“Minimum wage isn’t the same as a living wage. I have no right to set myself any higher than anyone else just because I glow some. The world’s an unfair place, and I have an advantage. If I used it, I wouldn’t be any better than anyone else.”

Javert seemed to mull that over for a minute. Then he walked away.

Valjean sighed. He hadn’t known what he’d been expecting.

**1999**

_1 st of November, 16:19 (GMT-5)_

“What’re you doing, loser?”

“Fuck off Parnasse, I’m being a nerd.”

“Nerd.”

Bahorel flipped Montparnasse the bird, continuing to type out his next message on the nifty little chatroom he’d stumbled upon in his perusal of the World Wide Web. It was, of course, for lovers of European pop music. Now, he hadn’t listened to anything from Europe since the Beatles had been at their height, but that wouldn’t stop him from his curiosity. His screen name was ‘bahoswell1’. The ‘1’ was there because ‘bahoswell’ had already been taken, for whatever reason. But in any case, he was discussing the merits and demerits of boybands in the face of the evolution of music with two like-minded people - ‘courfeyraaaad’ and ‘music-shetta’. They all agreed that boybands could and should do whatever the fuck they wanted as long as they wore pants so tight it cut off circulation to their ankles, of course.

“That’s a little gay,” Montparnasse peeked over Bahorel’s shoulder.

“You’re a little gay.”

* * *

Marius chewed on his lip, pressed in tight beside Courfeyrac and frowning at the message Courfeyrac was typing out.

“Are you sure asking a complete stranger on the internet if he lives close enough to meet is a good idea? What if he’s a murderer?”

“Well, Freckles, my darling,” Courfeyrac began, putting his arm around Marius’ shoulders. “If he was a murderer, I’m reasonably certain that our star family would have stepped in to deliver an electrical storm to our area large enough to stop me from asking by getting rid of the fuses in here. Other than that, what harm can it do?”

Trying not to cuddle in towards Courfeyrac – damn him, he knew damn well how much Marius liked to cuddle – Marius huffed out a sigh. “What do you even know about him?”

Courfeyrac clicked the mouse to send off the message to ask if bahoswell1 lived in their area ‘cause they shared a timezone and sometimes talked about the same places, and if so, would he like to meet? He shrugged. “I know he doesn’t understand brick pants and can appreciate a good butt. That’s good enough for me.”

* * *

_8 th of November, 13:28 (GMT-5)_

“So I said…” Bahorel got out between wheezes of laughter. “Get your own damn sparkles!”

Courfeyrac threw his head back and chortled as Marius spluttered into his Diet Coke™, both thoroughly impressed by their new companion’s wit, charm and general sense of humour. Courfeyrac turned a perfectly sculpted eyebrow upwards, tilting his head towards Marius. Marius smiled, nodding, and Courfeyrac immediately clapped a hand upon the table. Bahorel simply reclined in his chair, unfazed by the sudden smack of flesh against wood and the subsequent whimper as Courfeyrac realised he’d hit the table too hard.

“We have a proposal for you,” beamed Courfeyrac, rubbing his hands together and trying to make the gesture look suave rather than soothing.

Bahorel raised his eyebrows, leaning forward. “Is this a kinky sex thing?”

Truly, it was a testament to their characters that Courfeyrac and Marius spoke at the same time.

“Only if you want it to be,” Courfeyrac said.

“We’re asking you to come live with us!” Marius squawked.

A few moments of silence later, the heavy air was considerably lightened by the pleased glow of three stars.

“Sure, why not?”

* * *

“What?”

“They’re cool, Mont, I swear!”

“You think snapbacks are cool, I don’t trust a thing you say about ‘cool’! What is ‘cool’, can we even trust them?!”

“You’re getting hysterical again. Inside voice, Mont,” Bahorel drawled, continuing, “Who gives a damn about ‘trustworthy’, even, I mean, like, dude, they’re awesome. It’s not like they’re gonna stab us and steal our livers. Stars look out for stars, it’s one of the thingies in the thingy.”

“You mean the Constitution of Stardom and Cosmos?”

Bahorel snapped his fingers. “Yes, that! I can’t believe you actually know what it’s called, you great nerd.”

Montparnasse folded his arms across his chest, pouting and glancing off to the side, muttering, “When they banish you, they give you a lot of cosmic reading material. I can’t believe you’re moving in with them.”

“We.”

Here Montparnasse’s lips pursed into one thin, barely visible line, an impressive feat considering the plump and cherry-like nature of his lips. “What.”

“We.”

Eyes narrowing to flint, Montparnasse huffed out a breath through his nose. “I’m not moving in with a bunch of people I don’t know. Especially not people who _you_ think are cool.”

Bahorel barely missed a beat. “Fine,” he shrugged. “I’ll pack my things.”

“But I—“ Montparnasse’s eyes widened, glow retreating from the darkness into a different, more poignant aura. That was over almost as soon as it had begun, however, and Montparnasse’s glow was forced into the calm thrumming that indicated ‘AOK’. “I’m going out. Don’t wait up. I guess I’ll see you around, asshole. Don’t forget to leave your key.”

He stormed out before the mask on his luminescence could reach exhaustion and betray the turmoil going on beneath that ludicrously coiffed hair.

One of the definite benefits of being a star was the simple fact that people walking up and stabbing them would lead only to a single occurrence of sharp pain, and the imminent demise of the one doing the stabbing, unless of course, that person happened to be a star. It was for this reason that Montparnasse found he could walk unafraid through the night in the city. Besides, he provided his own light, sauntering through alleys like a shadow and a cat, conspicuous in his inconspicuousness. Rarely did anybody see him. Rarely did they recognise him.

It was on this rare night, however, that he had a tail, which he promptly whirled upon and bore down on, faltering only when he realised it was in fact, a small child, mostly small due to…malnourishment, Montparnasse guessed.

“Sorry, I—“

“What do you want?”

“Are you an angel? If you’re here, you fell.”

“Of course I’m an angel,” Montparnasse preened sardonically. “I mean, look at me.”

He started to walk away, but the child followed him.

“I’m being serious!”

“Stop following me.”

“But I—“

“Go away, I’m not in the mood.”

“Where do you want me to go?”

“Wow, could you be any more obnoxious?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, stop.”

They stopped, the child blinking owlishly at the air around Montparnasse. Oh, great, it was a starchild.

“Go home, kid,” Montparnasse murmured, silently passing the child a ten-dollar bill.

“Don’t have one,” the child jutted out its jaw, looking extremely conflicted before reluctantly taking the money anyway.

Montparnasse hesitated again. He knew what it was like to start from nothing. It wasn’t easy without a home, and things had changed since he’d last been looking for a home with nothing. He’d give the kid a place to crash and take it down to Child Services as soon as he could. Someone had to know the kid. He held out his hand. “Montparnasse.”

The child stared at his hand in awe, seemingly marvelling at the glow that surrounded each individual finger, before tentatively reaching out and shaking his hand. “Feuilly.”

* * *

**2000**

_5 th of March, 09:00 (GMT-5)_

Ever since that star had been transferred, Gregory Javert had lived a life of conflict. He made some excellent points, but the law… The law was supposed to help people, not destroy their lives. So he’d quit his job and immediately started training to become a social worker. Two years now he’d been working here, and he liked to think he’d done the people who came in justice. He turned up to work at nine in the morning, made house visits, tried to help people in abusive relationships, and filed the appropriate paperwork. Mostly, though, he devoted as much of his time as humanly possible to making sure children found the right homes.

What he wasn’t expecting at nine am on that morning was to look up and see a face unchanged, save for weariness, waiting to see someone about a child. One of his co-workers started to approach the ex-convict and Javert cleared his throat, standing and holding his hand out to stop her before approaching him himself.

“Jean Valjean,” he greeted, posture stiff. He didn’t have to say anything – Javert knew precisely why he was here. Two years of guarding him had brought a vague knowledge of a child, and prison gossip gave him whispers of a dead girlfriend. He had to be here to find his daughter.

“Javert?” Valjean looked at him in surprise, eyebrows rising.

He cleared his throat. “It’ll be hard for you to gain custody of her, considering your…” he eyed him, “…history. But I’ll see what I can do.” And he led the star that had changed him to his desk.

* * *

“Do I hafta?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

“’Cause why?”

“Just because.”

“’Cause why?”

“Just because!” Montparnasse snapped, immediately deflating and pinching the bridge of his nose. Feuilly was exhausting. Trying to find him a home was exhausting. Trying to find out who he was was exhausting.

Silence stretched between them for a few sacred minutes, Feuilly sensing that he’d pushed him a little too far. Then he piped up. “I’m sorry. I just don’t want to go back…I ran away from the last place for a reason,” he admitted, fidgeting and swinging his legs, kicking his heels against the bottom of the uncomfortable plastic chairs at the social services office.

Montparnasse sighed. “…Look, I’ll stick with you to make sure they don’t send you back to that place. We’ll find you somewhere else, where they’ll take care of you, and you’ll be okay. Okay?”

Feuilly twisted his mouth up to the side. “…I won’t see you after, will I?”

He sounded so forlorn that Montparnasse stared at him. Then he huffed and put an arm around him. “I never said that, pipsqueak. C’mon, let’s find you a home.”

* * *

**2001**

_12 th of September, 06:00 (GMT-5)_

Jehan sat slumped in the hospital chair, legs stretched out in front of them like tree trunks and chewed-up nails with glittery nail polish working through and braiding their hair. Their brow was furrowed in concern and they hadn’t touched the gel pens they’d recently discovered wrote exceedingly well upon flesh since they got here. It took a lot for a star to drink themself into a stupor like Grantaire’s, and he looked like shit. His skin was cold and clammy – had been since the doctors physically sucked the alcohol out of his stomach in a concoction of beers and ciders and vodka and absinthe and whiskey and – he hadn’t woken up yet. He looked like he’d just fallen, and in a way, Jehan supposed, he had.

How jarred must his ever-dwindling faith in humanity have been? The twisted, Romantic part of Jehan wanted to know, wanted to write page upon page of poetry on the topic. Maybe later, though… It would be in bad taste now, and Grantaire was their friend. The thousands of people dead or dying were unfathomable, but Grantaire was their friend.

Jehan heaved a great sigh, pushing up from the chair and brushing their hand momentarily through Grantaire’s damp curls. They stretched upwards and outwards, trying to regain feeling in their extremities.

“Be right back, mon ami,” they murmured, patting the unconscious Grantaire’s leg and heading out of the room in search of a vending machine. Upon locating one such contraption, they took pause.

“Hello?” questioned Jehan, to the dark little shadow lurking behind the vending machine.

The child peeked out with eyes as round and wide as saucers, mouth hanging open in awe. Jehan smiled. It wasn’t often they met a starchild these days.

“Are you an angel?” squeaked the child, a tang of worry evident in her voice as she stepped out fully, tugging down her skirt, jelly sandals squeaking against the linoleum floor. “Are you coming to take my daddy away? He’s sick.”

Jehan crouched down in front of her, voice gentle, “What’s your name?”

“Robin Joly,” she stared up at them.

“Well, I’m not an angel _or_ a doctor. But if you can see me, then you should know that I’m a star. And I’m going to watch over daddy Joly and try not to let him be in too much pain, okay?”

Robin Joly eyed them, assessing. “You can do that?”

“I can try,” Jehan nodded, offering Robin Joly their pinky to swear.

Robin Joly took Jehan’s pinky. “And if you break your promise, I get to break your pinky,” she said solemnly.

Jehan smiled, swinging their pinkies. “I would expect nothing less from such a fine, upstanding citizen.”

The beam they got in return could have matched their own natural luminescence.

* * *

**2003**

_1 st of October, 11:34 (GMT-5)_

“You won.”

“You testified for me.”

They spoke at the same time, Valjean and Javert immediately blinking at each other. Even their tones of astonishment matched.

“Well, I—“ they said in unison, cutting themselves off.

“You first,” insisted Javert.

Valjean smiled graciously. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“I think you’ll be a good father,” returned Javert.

The three years spent together trying to find and get Cosette back had been hard on both of them, rife with frustration and butting heads, but they’d found her, with a family of four, who fostered dozens of children but never adopted.

“Thank you,” Valjean exhaled, touching his fingertips to the back of Javert’s hand.

They’d won. The paperwork was being finalised, and all that remained were final inspections of Valjean’s home – which he would pass, given Javert’s own contributions – and Valjean coming face to face with Cosette Fauchelevant, soon to be Cosette Valjean, for the first time in eight years. He’d been there when Valjean cried at the very concept of getting her back, been hugged when the opportunity became a real possibility, and been subject to worries that she wouldn’t recognise him. It was true; Valjean would be a good father.

Javert shook his head. Privately, he thought it would all be worth it, if only that he would get to witness a star euphoric.

A week later, he was right, as a tiny pigtailed voice cried “Papa” and the room was aglow with starshine.

* * *

**2007**

_28 th of September, 15:03 (GMT-5)_

Combeferre headed towards the library with three colour-co-ordinated folders tucked underneath one arm and his other arm struggling to carry his bag, his back occupied with the cello on it. Why had he agreed to be a mentor for dyslexic freshmen, _why_? Extra credit, he reminded himself, pushing open the door to the library with the back of his folder-filled arm. ‘He’ll be blond, wears a lot of red, can’t miss him,’ they’d said to him by way of explaining how he’d know who the kid he was mentoring through the first World History paper of freshman year was. Combeferre scanned the room—

Oh. They had certainly been right about not being able to miss the kid. It was almost as if they’d deliberately sat in a seat where sun shone through skylights and cast a white-gold glow around unruly locks, framing olive skin with a shaggy halo of hair. There was a severe look to that face, glaring down at a textbook with intense concentration. This had to be Nicolas Enjolras, Combeferre internally confirmed, beginning to approach the freshman.

Nicolas Enjolras looked up at the footsteps and sound of the schoolbag smacking repeatedly against Combeferre’s leg, and stood. Wow. Okay. Red jeans. Combeferre cleared his throat.

“Hi,” he started, holding out his hand to shake and struggling, the movement making his bag fall down his arm and he stooped a little to try and stop it. Giving up, he merely retracted his arm with a long-suffering sigh. “I’m Combeferre,” he said instead.

Nicolas Enjolras looked softer with surprised eyebrows, somehow, and gestured to the chair next to him while responding in turn, “Enjolras.”

Combeferre dumped his bag and folders on the table next to Enjolras’ bag, setting his cello reverently down on its side on the ground. Then he sat down as Enjolras did, and looked over at their bags as his hands opened the zipper on his own. Enjolras’ was covered in badges and pins. He nodded towards the bag in question.

“Political?”

“Yeah,” said Enjolras, sounding a little defensive, almost crackling.

Combeferre leaned over to read the pins. “Cool,” he murmured, just checking out what causes Enjolras was into. “Nuclear disarmament… Help the homeless… ‘Ey…em eir’?”

Enjolras clenched eir jaw, folding eir arms and raising an eyebrow at Combeferre. “My pronouns,” ey explained shortly, not inviting any further snooping into eir personal life or allowing for disagreement. Something in Combeferre’s face changed and Enjolras opened eir mouth, a billion arguments racking up to deflect anything the junior said. “If you—“

“I’m so sorry,” Combeferre said. “I didn’t know, and I’ll use your pronouns henceforth.”

“…Thank you.”

Combeferre frowned, looking a little confused. “For what, being a decent person? No one deserves cookies for that. C’mon, what were you going to say? I cut you off.”

A rare little smile found its way onto Enjolras’ lips and ey opened eir mouth to speak.

They didn’t leave the library until five thirty, and when they did, Enjolras carried Combeferre’s backpack and they had plans to hang out that weekend.

_15 th of November, 16:08 (GMT-5)_

“Hey. Hey, Enjolras. _Enjolras_.”

“Yes?”

“If he looks around, you might terrify the everloving shit out of him.”

Enjolras blustered, flushing as red as eir duffel coat and looking away from the sophomore ey’d been unintentionally fixing with a gaze that could bring a continent to its knees. Okay, ey couldn’t help it. Enjolras sneaked a glance. “Do you think he noticed?”

Combeferre closed the book he’d been quietly reading out for Enjolras and peered over his thick glasses to check. “No. What is this, a crush?”

“What? No,” Enjolras iterated. “I just heard him yelling at some seniors and it was kind of amazing and I think I need to ask him to be my friend. How do I get him to be my friend without offending him? How did you become my friend?”

Snorting a little, Combeferre shook his head. “Social justice? Fate? I ask myself that question every day. Just talk to him.”

Enjolras stood up with the air of an avenging angel, with fire behind em and eir hands firmly set upon the table. Enjolras sat down, putting eir face on eir bag. “How do people…” Ey then proceeded to make a number of distressed walrus noises. Enjolras was yet to master the art of social interaction.

“Seriously?” Combeferre sighed. This was just like the time Enjolras had come over and been showered with familiar affection by his parents. Enjolras had practically frozen in front of them, woodenly polite, until Combeferre had dragged em upstairs and to his room, where Enjolras promptly laid down on the floor and made generally upset noises, musing aloud about how Combeferre’s parents were so nice and how was ey supposed to react to them and oh god help.

Combeferre patted Enjolras on the shoulder a few times, getting up and going to retrieve the sophomore commonly known as Feuilly for em.

* * *

_11 th of December, 20:56 (GMT-5)_

It was snowing, marked Claquesous with an irritated curl of their mouth as they raised a cigarette to it and blew the smoke into the air. How they had procured the cigarettes was nobody’s business, and they stuck to the shadows tonight, keeping an eye on the apartment they were planning on breaking into when the owner left to pick up hookers. What a charming gentleman he was.

How had Claquesous got into this life with a mere sixteen years of age under their belt? The answer: simply. Their delightful little ‘family’ had taken a vacation to this wonderful land of opportunity and luck. Claquesous had slunk away in a Wal-Mart and never returned.

They extinguished the cigarette by tossing it at a pile of snow, where it burned a hole in the ice until it gave up and agreed to be put out.

It was dark. The street lamp outside this alcove had been broken in a brawl-gone-south not three weeks ago. So why could they still see their immediate surroundings?

Claquesous narrowed their eyes, quietening and slinking back into the recesses of the night as they waited for the source of the light to show itself. A man turned the corner.

His face glowed. Fuck the mission, this man’s face glowed.

“Who are you?” they whispered mysteriously, shrouded in mystery and looking for the life of them like they ate mystery for breakfast as they stepped out of the shadows and looked down at the strange glowing man.

The man looked at them indifferently and kept walking. Claquesous grabbed him by the arm. “I’m definitely not on drugs, so you’d better explain why your face is all…spangly.”

The man wrenched his arm out of Claquesous’ grip, glancing around them. “Shut up,” he hissed, gripping Claquesous’ arms and walking them backwards into the wall, where he put a hand over their mouth.

Claquesous bit him, glaring a little. “What the fuck are you?”

The man walked away.

Over the next few weeks, Claquesous took it upon themself to…illegally follow and take record of the strange glowing man. They learned the following:

  1.      The man’s face wasn’t all that glowed, which Claquesous discovered when they found his apartment.
  2.      The man’s name was Montparnasse. Or at least, that was what he went by.
  3.      No one else could see him glowing.
  4.      Somehow, inexplicably, Montparnasse must have been related to a famous highwayman from the British history books.



It was New Year’s Eve when Claquesous confronted Montparnasse again, and this time, Montparnasse did not walk away. That may have been something to do with Claquesous taking Éponine, Brujon and Babet with them to find him on this most auspicious night, whence they surrounded him, and seduced him once again to a life of the night, and decades of attempts to make things right with the heavens fell right back into Montparnasse’s bloody delights.

* * *

**2010**

_1 st of January, 02:23 (GMT-5)_

“So let me get this straight…” Jehan frowned; propping nemself up on nir elbows and blowing faded blue hair out of nir face as ne surveyed Grantaire. “Your New Years’ resolutions are to…argue better?”

“Mais oui,” Grantaire confirmed. “I need to cite my sources better, and no offence, Jehan, but as far as practice goes, our debates do tend to spiral into the frankly depressive and culminate in multiple pessimistic existential crises. Not that I don’t appreciate them.”

Jehan huffed, but nudged Grantaire with nir hip before rolling onto nir back. “I don’t fault you there. My debates are awesome. But I support you in this fresh year, capital R, in your efforts to become the master debater.”

Grantaire honestly choked a little at the joke and Jehan took advantage of his incapacity to speak to outline nir own resolution:

“I think I want to go to university again next year.”

Grantaire raised thick eyebrows, face still red from the choking. “Well, that—“ he coughed a little, “—was unexpected. I thought applications were done.”

Jehan smiled. “Next year. Twenty-eleven.”

“Two-thousand-and-eleven.”

“Twenty-eleven.”

“Two-thousand-and-eleven.”

“Twenty-eleven.”

“Two-thousand-and-eleven.”

“Twenty-eleven.”

“Two-thousand-and-eleven.”

“Twenty-eleven.”

“Two-thousand-and-eleven.”

“Twenty-eleven.”

“Two-thousand-and-eleven.”

“No, twenty-eleven. We’re getting off-track. What do you think?”

And throwing an arm around Jehan, Grantaire huffed a little. “I’ll count up the accumulated years worth of college funds, see if we need to add to it to keep up with how extortionate it is to get a degree these days.”

_20 th of January, 11:01 (GMT-5)_

As it turned out, a college education cost significantly more than it had the last time they’d checked – the mid-nineties. And so, Jehan took a job in a bakery, and Grantaire walked into the bar for his first day of work.

It was on his way in that Grantaire literally bumped into his boss as she dashed out, shoving a black thing into his hands. “Can’t talk, gotta go, gonna be an aunt, Feuilly’s in charge, welcome to the team!”

Grantaire shifted his gaze to the man behind the counter, with an entirely perplexed expression on his face. He gestured dumbly at the door, and then looked down at the black fabric in his hands. He blinked up at Feuilly again. “What just happened?”

‘Feuilly’ chuckled, turning to face him. The easy smile on his freckled face faltered and Grantaire found himself frowning for a moment. Had he already fucked up this job, just by showing up? Oh god, he had, hadn’t he? He’d fucked up. It was the question; it had to have been the question. Or maybe he just didn’t _like_ him. Grantaire sucked in a deep breath as his shoulders began to shake. Feuilly opened his mouth to speak and Grantaire prepared himself for a litany of faults already clear to the stranger by trying to build his defensive shell, but he wasn’t ready and he’d had an awful morning, and—

“You’re a star,” he said instead.

The majority of Grantaire’s anxiety rushed out of his lungs; like an inflatable pillow without a stopper being squeezed by a camper who had to move on before the weather changed.

“Oh…” he exhaled.

Feuilly gave him a friendly smile, beckoning him over and lifting the part of the bar that lifted to allow employees access to the bar itself so Grantaire could walk through. “What did you think I was going to say?” he continued as Grantaire stepped into his new work environment. “Here.” Feuilly handed Grantaire a cloth, pointing at the smooth-but-a-little-sticky walnut finishing on the bar itself, as he turned his own attention to cleaning glasses.

Grantaire tied the apron behind his back and got to work. “Uh. I didn’t,” he lied to the starchild, hoping he wouldn’t call him out like Jehan did.

“Liar.”

No such luck.

Grantaire didn’t get to reply, though, because Feuilly continued speaking:

“It’s whatever though, man, like, I mean really, we got no business shoving our noses into others’ businesses. You wanna survive in this world, you step in when you gotta, but you don’t pry when it ain’t important, yeah?”

Wow, tactful. Grantaire snorted a little. “You seriously think stepping in’s gonna make a difference?”

Feuilly paused, regarding Grantaire for a moment as they worked, already settling into a rhythm. He stepped forward and leaned on a bit of counter his workmate hadn’t got to yet, and scrubbed slowly at glass. “Well, I guess it depends on the scale, doesn’t it? I mean, sure, you get one person, you can only really help one person at a time, but the more bodies you got, the more manpower, I guess you’d be able to make more of a difference. It’s all about starting at the bottom and working up.”

Grantaire looked up, shook his head, and got back to wiping. He decided not to comment, however – he’d only just started this job and honestly, he’d like to keep it for once.

They slipped into a comfortable silence, punctuated only by the occasional squeak of clean glass and bumping of elbows.

“So, Granta—“

Grantaire interrupted him, “Call me R.”

Feuilly stopped what he was doing, and bellowed a chortle. A second later, Grantaire was smiling too, a small, satisfied smirk that betrayed tinges of appreciation. There was nothing like cementing a friendship than a good old-fashioned pun.

* * *

_21 st of August, 17:43 (GMT-5)_

“I just don’t get why we _insist_ that it’s not our own fault that we’re so shitty? Like, what even gives with the whole deflecting shit we’ve got, as a race, going on? Are we really so vexed with the even slight possibility that it might be one of the fundamental faults of humanity that we flat-out refuse to acknowledge the idea that we _might_ be a part of the problem? Like, bullshit! We might not have participated in the physical stuff centuries ago, but we still benefit on a base level based on the fact that we belong in certain groups and facets of society, and it is complete _bullshit_ that people refuse to place themselves with their own fucking groups, just so we don’t have to feel guilty about shit! It’s bullshit!”

The slightly French accent of the man with the curly hair and two friends continued on its tirade against humanity as Éponine lay in wait. He didn’t seem likely to slow. She would give it three seconds, but no longer. Any longer and she’d risk the rant coming to a sudden end and she’d be scunnered, fucked, up shit creek without a paddle. She had to chance it and make it to Mont and Sous on the other side of the road.

Success!

Éponine had come away from the stranger with his wallet, and made for the lights to cross the road and escape. She had to remind herself not to run. Walking would do her dandy.

“Hey!” the guy had caught up to her and now stood, blocking the clear path she had had. His friends weren’t at his side, however. A police officer hovered not ten feet away. Shit. And right after she’d heard him talking shit about humanity, there was no way he wouldn’t turn her in, there was no way she was getting out of this, there was no way—

She turned hardened eyes up to him. “Got anything better to do than harass an innocent girl in the street? There’s an officer right there, y’know.”

“I know.” The man shrugged. “I just want my ID and my bankcard. I’m going out tonight. You can keep the rest, there’s like, sixty dollars in there or something.”

Éponine cast her eyes worriedly over towards the police officer again. Then she thought of Azelma and Gavroche. Then she glanced at Montparnasse and Claquesous across the road. Swallowing, Éponine reluctantly nodded and acquiesced, palming him the wallet.

The man took out, as promised, only his ID and bankcard, then handed the wallet back to her. It felt strange to be handed it, almost dishonest…

“What the fuck?” she couldn’t stop herself from asking.

Shrugging, the man put the two cards into the inside of his jacket pocket – a good choice of location. “People steal for a reason. No skin off my back.”

Éponine deadpanned, “Are you Batman or something?”

“Close,” chortled the man in a seemingly uncharacteristically jovial manner. “Grantaire.”

“The fuck is that close,” she grumped.

“Eh,” ‘Grantaire’ shrugged again. Didn’t his shoulders ever get tired? “I live in a cave?”

She tried to keep the incredulous look. She really did. But she couldn’t stop the giggle.

* * *

Feuilly glanced across the road during a lull in the conversation with Jehan. Recognising a decade-familiar glow, he smiled to himself. He fancied himself forgotten by the angel, the man—the _star_ from the streets, little-knowing that Montparnasse had seen him too and had concealed a relieved sigh in the collar of his coat.

* * *

**2011**

_12 th of September, 03:09 (GMT-5)_

“Combeferre! Combeferre, open up! Combeferre, it’s important! Combeferre! _Combeferre_!”

Ah yes, Combeferre thought to himself, smiling fondly, the dulcet tones of a sleep-deprived Enjolras, slightly slurred with exhaustion and entirely impatient. He’d known this was going to happen when Enjolras was accepted to the same university as he this year. It was assuredly an eventuality that Combeferre was entirely okay with, and he pulled on a pair of pyjama pants that were lying on the floor nearby as he went to answer the door.

He was met with the same Enjolras from school, if a little taller. Definitely more obnoxious, though. Yep.

“Yes?” he sighed, trying to sound exasperated but mostly coming across as motherly. Combeferre gave up and dragged Enjolras into his room, sitting em down on the bed and sitting down on the chair opposite em. Hopefully the presence of a bed would at least make em feel sleepy.

Enjolras drew emself up to eir full height, which did, admittedly, total out at approximately five feet and four inches, but was intimidating to the general observer nonetheless, and iterated seriously, “This school does not have a single student-run society with the aim of social betterment that is not affiliated with a particular campaign or political party.”

Combeferre blinked, taking off his glasses. “What are you saying?” he inquired languorously.

“Do it with me.”

This gave Combeferre pause and he blinked at em, wiping his glasses clean of smudges in the dim lighting of a college dorm room. He contemplated it.

“Can we name it something punny?”

Enjolras beamed with serious purpose.

_17 th of September, 17:52 (GMT-5)_

“But I—“

“No.”

“But—“

“ _Enjolras_.”

“Will you just—“

“No. You are _not_ allowed to build a barricade in front of the dean’s office until he agrees to see you,” Combeferre punctuated his words slowly and clearly, leaving no more room for argument.

They were standing in the café area of the students’ union, queuing up to get to the counter and order dinner.

“He’s responsible for laying out those instructions, it’s _him_ I need to see.”

“Enjolras,” Combeferre sighed as they reached the front of the line. “While usually I appreciate your enthusiasm to go straight to the top of any problem, I _really_ don’t think verbally eviscerating the man responsible for our education is going to help you to start a students’ social justice society.”

The curly-haired and sparkly-eyed fellow behind the counter interjected, “He’s right.”

“About what?” asked a co-worker of the fellow, brushing past with two plated wraps, which he placed on the countertop before slinging a towel over his shoulder, waving over a spindly co-worker that approached with a curious demeanour.

“What’re we talking about?”

The man with the towel on his shoulder removed the towel and swatted the newest arrival with it. “Table thirteen, Freckles.”

As ‘Freckles’ left, Combeferre looked around – amazingly enough, there wasn’t anybody queuing behind them at that particular moment. It was at that moment that Combeferre remembered how bad of an idea it tended to be for him to be quiet for too long when Enjolras was prompted about The Cause.

Thankfully, their listeners seemed interested.

“…The only way,” Enjolras was saying, “Is for students to get involved, not just sit around and sign petitions and drop some money in a bucket, because while these things do help, there are other, more direct methods of helping people. We need to defeat the system, not feed it, and _that_ is why we _need to make this club_.”

Their initial engager nodded along, and opened his mouth when Enjolras finished. “You are aware that I know this, right?” he twinkled. “What I was going to say, actually, was that all you really need to make this club is a constitution and six members. As long as at least half of the starting members attend the institution, you’re pretty much home free. Trust me, I’m half a lawyer. Shut up, Bahorel.” He stamped on his companion’s foot when he snorted at the lawyer comment.

Combeferre looked back at Enjolras. Enjolras looked up at Combeferre. Combeferre knew that look – that was the patented Enjolras ‘Can-We-Keep-Him’ face. To the majority of others, it looked just as serious as most of Enjolras’ facial expressions, but Combeferre knew the difference, and so, apparently, did their new friend.

“Enjolras,” Enjolras introduced emself, holding a hand out to their new friend. “This is Combeferre.” The aforementioned nodded in greeting.

He nodded, shaking eir hand. “I’m Courfeyrac, this is Bahorel. Freckles over there is our friend Marius.”

People cleared their throats behind them. Enjolras and Combeferre swiftly ordered, shuffling off to a table surrounded by plenty of chairs, with the plan to be joined by the triad of stars. This would do nicely.

* * *

_2 nd of November, 15:26 (GMT-5)_

“This is sick, and twisted, and pointless, and hopeless, and what do they even hope to achieve?”

Feuilly chimed in, “Social betterment for the underprivileged?”

Grantaire snorted derisively. “More like the privileged trying not to feel guilty about their privilege.” His voice grew in volume and his body started trembling as he built and built into a rant.

Jehan sighed heavily, sitting on their sunken couch with Feuilly as Grantaire paced. This was precisely why ne had been reluctant to invite nir flatmates to the group that was forming on-campus.

“And the _name_?” Grantaire’s French accent grew thick as he recited the pun he had initially laughed at, “Les Amis de l’ABC…?” He shook his head. “Pah! ‘The Friends of the Oppressed’? What do they think, that an extension of friendship will just _magically_ erase poverty, racism, sexism, all the isms and the phobias, and corruption to boot? They can’t possibly think they’ll actually make a difference, can they? I’m calling bullshit. It doesn’t change. They think it will, but it won’t, they’ll see it with their own eyes, feel it with their own hands, watch the world turn jaded around them and I’ll _not_ see it happen again. No fuckin’ way, pal, not a fucking _chance_. I’ll not go to a single damn one of their funerals. And you know what else—”

“Grantaire, shut the fuck up,” smiled Jehan in a way that told Grantaire that if he said another such word of the group ne had decided would be a worthwhile pursuit, Grantaire would be waking up a very sorry man in the morning. “You don’t have to come. Feuilly?”

Feuilly thought about it. “Depends on the times. I need to double-check my shifts…”

Jehan got to nir feet, towering over Grantaire and patting him on the shoulder. “If you change your mind, let me know and I’ll text you the room number. Just…don’t be alone, okay? Oh, screw it; I don’t have to go. We don’t have to go. Are you okay?”

Still shaking a little, Grantaire turned on his heel. “Go to your fucking club, Jehan,” was all that he said as he grabbed his coat and stormed out the front door.

* * *

_16:17 (GMT-5)_

“So basically…and forgive me if I left anything out…” started Montparnasse, Éponine’s star friend who _she_ didn’t know was a star but Grantaire could tell. “You yelled at your oldest friend…because…ne was trying to help people?”

When he put it like that, Grantaire felt like a douchebag.

“Y’know, when you put it like that, I feel like a douchebag…” he voiced his thoughts.

Éponine batted at his cheek as he turned his head to look up at Montparnasse, and Grantaire settled back down on the ground in front of her, as she braided his hair. “I still don’t get why you didn’t want to go, R,” she grumbled. “I mean, look at the first time we met. And then there’s all the times we’ve passed kids in the street, and the time with the old lady, and the time with—”

“Alright, alright…” Grantaire cut her off as Montparnasse chuckled; putting his feet up on the coffee table and watching Éponine braid Grantaire’s hair. “So I don’t like seeing people in pain. Not the same thing.”

Montparnasse shrugged. “Sounds kinda like the same thing.”

“Well, it’s not,” snapped Grantaire.

“Okay, okay,” murmured Éponine with a roll of her eyes and a tug of the finished braid. “Whatever you say.”

Montparnasse’s phone beeped and he looked down at it, frowning, cherry lips pulling into a disgruntled glower.

Éponine groaned. She’d know that look anywhere. “Claque?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s a Claque?” came the query from Grantaire, tipping his head back onto Éponine’s knee so he could look at both of them, though upside-down.

Éponine explained it simply. “Claquesous is a claque-douche.”

Montparnasse put more detail into it. “They…work with us. But they know things about me.”

Oh. Grantaire knew what ‘things’ were. ‘Things’ was why they had the lights on even though they could both see just fine; the starshine and glow that gave them away to…

“They sound like a child.” He phrased it carefully.

Montparnasse nodded, confirming. Éponine felt more and more like both of these losers knew something she didn’t with every passing minute.

* * *

**2012**

_14 th of February, 18:15 (GMT-5)_

“Why, Jehan,” Courfeyrac winked in a jovial fashion – though really there were very few other ways to wink – and pretended to swoon. “I never thought you would ask.”

Jehan physically smacked Courfeyrac in the upper arm, making him cry out in pain. “Don’t be a dildo, Courf, if I were proposing to you, you know damn well there would be candles and rain.”

“Wouldn’t the candles—“ Courfeyrac tried to point out that the candles would be extinguished.

“Yes,” Jehan nodded firmly. “That’s the point.”

“So you _are_ proposing to me?”

“ _No_.” Death glare. “I’m aromantic.”

Courfeyrac blinked. “I know you’re a Romantic.”

“No,” Jehan repeated. “I’m _aromantic_. I mean, I’m also a Romantic, I mean, I was literally there for that, but I’m aromantic as well.”

“Oh…” Realisation dawned on Courfeyrac right as, conveniently, a union technician finally got one of the fluorescent overhead lights behind him to turn on.

Jehan shook nir head in an amiable fashion. “Do you want your ring back or what?”

Courfeyrac’s expression grew startled. “Back?”

Jehan held the ring closer to him, the small kitten on the signet ring tarnished from three decades in the sand, and Courfeyrac’s eyes welled up. He had lost something on that beach, fought in two world wars and seen what people could do. He held his hand out for the ring, tears spilling over, but he swiped them away and took a deep breath when the metal touched his palm. This was a part of him. This was a part of him that he’d never thought he’d get back, and his smile was wobbly as he put the ring back on his finger and hugged Jehan so tight that nir choked-off laugh soon turned to wheezing.

* * *

_29 th of August, 21:49 (GMT-5)_

Joly laughed, a full laugh that showed the world she was entirely enthralled with her patient’s tales of how he had ended up in the emergency room for the millionth time. Her cheeks were rosy and her scrubs were significantly cleaner than some of the other interns’, but that wasn’t what caught Bossuet’s eye as his hands flapped to illustrate his point, even as Joly stitched up the cut above his eyebrow, wiping away excess blood afterwards.

“So I was lying there on the ground, with the cat licking my crotch – I was wearing pants at the time – and six or seven potatoes in my hands, and my mom was just laughing,” laughed he.

The doctor-in-training shook her head, eyes growing concerned but losing none of their sparkle. “That doesn’t sound very nice…”

Bossuet tried to shake his head, but Joly put her hands on his cheeks and held him steady. He spoke anyway, “She loves me; she’s my mom. It’s just how my family is, don’t worry about it, if it happened to her it’d be on YouTube by now.”

Joly tried to look disapproving, but failed miserably when her fingers lingered on Bossuet’s temple. He reached up and brushed his fingertips over the back of her hand. She cleared her throat. He didn’t move. So she glanced around, forgetting for a second that they were in a curtained-off cubicle. Her shoulders de-tensed slightly, just enough for him to see that this was okay.

“Go out with me?” Bossuet requested simply, with a look on his face like a puppy ready to wag his tail.

Joly scrunched her nose up at him. “Get discharged first.” She swatted him gently on the chin, mindful of his injury. If such inadvertently caused physical damage were to be a regular occurrence, she would have to step up the yoga. He was, she decided, worth the extra yoga.

* * *

_30 th of August, 16:13 (GMT-5)_

“And she’s beautiful and she’s got this curly brown hair that curls and puffs and it’s brown and she’s got great eyes and she wears these dresses and paints her nails all prettily, and she reads and she’s an English major and she has these freckles and she’s just amazing,” Marius finished on a red-faced breath.

Courfeyrac could feel his heart sinking further and further down into his shoes as Marius raved about the girl who had come up to him in the library that morning and pointed out that she knew he’d been hiding every time she came into view – one remarkable occasion had been when Marius had turned up at the flat with twigs in his hair, regaling his flatmates with the tale of how he had dived headfirst into a bush upon the mysterious girl on whom he had a crush’s appearance – and she’d asked him out. It wasn’t that Courfeyrac didn’t want Marius to be happy; it was that for decade upon decade, his closest companion had been the freckled lad and he was…fond of him. If Marius were to leave him and go off and get married…where would that leave him?

He betrayed none of this to Marius, instead keeping a ninety-percent wattage grin on his face and waggling his eyebrows a little. “So when’s the big night?”

Marius flushed redder than the blood of angry men, and bit his lip as he smiled. “Tonight. I’m picking her up around six.”

“Well, what are you waiting for?” blustered Courfeyrac, leaping to his feet. “Let’s find you something to wear.”

Maybe one day he would stop being so self-destructive in the face of his encouragement of his friends. That day was not this day.

When Marius left, Courfeyrac looked around. Bahorel was out. Marius was on a…on a date. And where was he, on his own? He fingered the kitten signet ring that no longer left his finger. It felt like he was losing parts of himself again, with the fog starting to creep in like it had on the beaches, when it hadn’t begun to dissipate around the edges of his general self for a long, long while. The water had been red that day. He left the flat and sought out the companions he knew would be around.

* * *

Enjolras simply was _not_ equipped for this, ey thought to emself, contemplating the presence of the star that was currently sprawled out face down on eir bed. Where was Combeferre when one needed him?

That wasn’t to say that Enjolras wasn’t listening, of course.

“I just, y’know?”

“Use your words, Courfeyrac,” ey offered a gentle reminder. Anybody who said that Enjolras didn’t care about eir friends was sorely mistaken.

Courfeyrac sucked in a deep breath through the filter of a pillow. “He’s just been a constant fixture in my life for so long, and things were fucking _awful_ before I walked into that shop in Canada, and _I don’t like it when people leave me_ , I know you don’t really like him, but he’s _my_ constant fixture, and I don’t like this kind of change…”

It was awkward, but Enjolras put a hand on Courfeyrac’s head and lay down beside him, thinking back to what Combeferre did when ey was having Emotions on his bed. Enjolras coaxed the pillow out from underneath Courfeyrac’s face, brushing lightly at his hair as ey frowned, trying to put together the right words. It would probably come off as a speech, but it would be better than nothing.

“Courf…” ey began, discarding the pillow to the other side of the room. “You are a piercing individual, and he is not leaving you. He has a date. He’s a star, not dead, and you know Pontmercy better than to think that just because he’s found himself a girlfriend, he’d just discard you. You are luminous, and I would even go so far as to use scientific terms to describe you as the nucleus of the group.”

At least Enjolras was slightly more advantaged than Combeferre in such situations, though unfairly so. Combeferre knew people better, it was true, but Enjolras could gauge their reactions, providing they were stars, by their glow, and ey smiled a little when Courfeyrac’s brightened.

“You’re not just saying that?”

Enjolras knew damn well what people thought of em, and ey was not afraid to poke fun at emself. “Citizen,” ey puffed up like ey was about to give Courfeyrac a passionate speech. Instead, ey said, “I never _just say_ anything.”

Courfeyrac beamed at em and Enjolras had to squint against the glow, but smiled. It was nice when ey could help the people ey cared about. Courfeyrac pressed his lips to Enjolras’ cheek in a feather-light kiss. Enjolras blushed.

* * *

 _Meanwhile_ …

Marius raised his hand to the door, and lowered it again. He swallowed a breath mint, and then another one. He smoothed his hair back, and then cursed when his actions only made his hair puff back, and then he pressed his hand to it. He didn’t notice the face peeking out from behind the curtains, and when the door opened, his back was to it, he was standing on one leg, and he was scrubbing at the toe of his shoe with his shirt cuff.

“Ahem,” his date made her presence known at the door, and Marius promptly fell over, landing in the bushes. She giggled, and the sound was like orchestral chimes combined with a celeste, only it was definitely a laugh and not tuned percussive instruments. Marius groaned, flipping his tie away from his eyes, and Cosette’s face appeared in his line of vision, backlit by hall lights that made flyaway hairs glow and her outstretched hand seem like a line to heaven. “We’ve got to stop encountering each other like this,” she smiled, wiggling her fingers.

He took her hand and stood, awkwardly brushing himself down as she helped him to get leaves off of his person.

Of course, her (star???) father just had to appear at the door when her hands were sweeping over his butt. There were twigs aplenty in his hair, but no, it had to be his butt, and they sprang apart, Marius colouring as he stepped forth, hand shaking as he held it out to the man. Another man appeared behind him, so naturally Marius’ first instinct was to hold out his other hand at the same time. He put that one away, and mumbled incoherently about how nice it was to meet them as he shook their hands, one at a time.

“Papa, Father, this is Marius. Marius, these are my dads,” Cosette slipped her arm through his and squeezed his elbow lightly, reassuringly.

Marius swallowed. “Hello—“ he cut himself off. Wow, he sounded like a doofus.

Papa smiled good-naturedly at the pair of youths – well, at his daughter and the ageless celestial being that was taking her out on a date – and waved a hand. “You kids have a good time. Just remember.” His eyes hardened. “Technically, I’m a felon.” The smile was back, and Marius let out a small, slightly terrified noise.

The other man, her father, simply stared at them. “Home before ten.”

“Yes, father,” Cosette appeased her fathers, and turned herself and Marius around, starting to lead him away. “Bye!”

Marius could feel their stares on the back of his neck as they walked away.

“Your dads are terrifying…”

* * *

_7 th of September, 20:09 (GMT-5)_

Bursting through the door in a wave of first-date excitement, Joly and Bossuet’s hands were linked as closely as they’d grown over the past few days on rushed not-dates and frantic texts fired off in the paediatrics ward and between lectures. They had found in each other kindred spirits, filled with delight and a feeling like comfort and home. The thrill would fade, in time, but the easy companionship would stay, cemented like paw-prints in a freshly laid pavement. If one were to believe in soulmates, one may have implied that they were this, but soulmates _and_ stars would be exponentially too many fantastical elements for a single universe, and so they were not. At this current moment in time, however, Joly and Bossuet walked into a bar.

“Oh!” exclaimed Joly, causing two incidents to occur – first, one man behind the bar to look up so fast his nose made a fast acquaintance with his workmate, and second, Bossuet to jump and immediately knock someone’s drink over. While Bossuet was apologising and the bartender cried out at how his nose was now bleeding, Joly continued in surprise, “You’re aglow!”

The bartender began to laugh despite the blood gushing from his nostrils while Bossuet wondered whether this was another thing such as the tongue-in-mirror and bed-due-north quirks that he was about to learn about. He hastily cleaned up the mess caused by the spillage and followed Joly to the bar, where she was tipping the bartender’s head back and inspecting the damage.

“I’b also b’eedig,” he garbled out through a mouth of blood while the other bartender laughed freely.

“I can’t fucking believe this—“ he explained his laughter through teary eyes, leaning towards Bossuet. “I’ve seen the fuckin’ hits R can take, and it’s an accidental elbow to the nose that—I just—Oh my god, this is hilarious…”

Bossuet couldn’t help that he had one of those personalities where when others were laughing; he was compelled to join in. Soon, all four of them were laughing. Truly, despite all the blood, this was the start of a beautiful friendship. The blood of the covenant, after all. The blood of the covenant.

* * *

**2013**

_5 th of June, 07:23 (GMT-5)_

“Hello, good morning, I’m Trisha Delaney and I’m sorry to interrupt your viewing schedule, this is a matter of national urgency. At approximately four am today, a farmer’s son witnessed a strange glowing in the sky and went outside to investigate. Expecting a comet or shooting star, he got significantly more than he bargained for. Live on the scene is Barry Green.”

“Thank you, Trisha, I’m Barry Green and as you can see in the cordoned-off area behind me, there are two significantly-sized craters in Mr Nolan’s field, one overlaps the other and the area in which the two meet is far deeper than the edges. Mr Nolan, can you tell me what your son discovered when he went outside?”

“Well, Barry, there were people. Two of ‘em. Climbing out the crater.”

“People, Mr Nolan?”

“Aliens.”

“Surely that’s a little far-fetched.”

“Barry, two people fell out of the sky, it was _aliens_. That or angels.”

“There you have it, aliens or angels, and specialists are _baffled_. Back to you, Trisha.”

“Thank you, Barry, and here I have one such specialist; world-renowned historian and phenomenon-investigator, Doctor Andrew Anderson. Doctor Anderson, what do you have to say of this?”

“Well, going back millennia, there are accounts of this phenomenon, people falling out of the sky and, well, glowing, to some. Records come from all over the world, all sorts of cultures, some even dating all the way back to biblical times. They crop up as all sorts of ideas; gods, angels, aliens, even abducted humans, but they all have a recurring theme, that they do glow to some people privileged enough to see them, and they do exist. They just fall out of the sky.”

“You sound awfully sure of that, Doctor.”

“You see the crater there, don’t you? Are you going to tell me that those two folk sitting on the back of that ambulance came out of nowhere? What I want to know is why has nobody asked _them_ where they come from? For all we know, they could be the stars themselves.”

“And I’m afraid that’s all we have time for now, more news on this topic to follow, when hopefully we’ll have more information on this phenomenon, an explanation. Who are these people? Where do they come from? What do they want? I’m Trisha Delaney, and this has been a matter of national urgency. Have a nice day.”

* * *

_6 th of June, 14:00 (GMT-5)_

Enjolras had called a crisis meeting of Les Amis de l’ABC when Courfeyrac had burst into ey and Combeferre’s study space with an uncharacteristically serious expression. “We need a meeting ASAP, I’m not even kidding, they’re already talking about making stars come forward,” he’d intoned, and so the meeting had been called.

First, a moment to survey this momentous event in history. Everybody’s paths had led them here, to the student union of this particular university, with the people with whom they had bonded. It was an impressive turnout. This meeting would mark the beginning of the revolt.

* * *

_A little earlier…_

“Fuck no,” uttered Grantaire, turning over and shoving a pillow over his head.

Jehan wrenched this pillow from his grasp and smacked Grantaire repeatedly with it, punctuating each dull thud with a word, “You—are—coming—to—this—meeting—if—it—kills—me.”

“Leave it alone, Jehan,” Feuilly pushed a hand over his face, rubbing at his eyes. “Of course he’s not going to come.”

Alas, Jehan was intrepid, and while ne stopped hitting Grantaire with a pillow, ne did not give up. “This is important, Grantaire, this concerns _us_.”

“All that’s going to happen is I’m going to be proven right,” Grantaire hissed, raising heavy eyes to glare at Jehan. “Nobody’s going to trust us, we’re basically the new monster under the bed, and we’re going to be _exposed_ for that. We’re _always watching_ , and we don’t _care_ about people, so why should they care about us? Excuse me for not wanting a front row seat to the systematic destruction of my kind.”

Jehan met Grantaire’s glower with one of nir own. “Be that as it may, it’s really fucking shitty of you to not give a shit about what happens to you, what happens to your _friends_. It’s worth it to try. _We’re_ worth it to try. C’mon, R, don’t be an asshole, not about this…”

Feuilly raised his eyebrows beseechingly, to attempt to back up what Jehan said.

There was a quiet rustling noise from under the covers, and then a world-weary sigh. “Can I bring people?”

* * *

_At the meeting…_

Enjolras got to eir feet and the attendees of the emergency meeting fell silent. Ey looked around emself. Their numbers had almost doubled today; Marius had brought his girlfriend (Courgette? Colette? Cosette.), something about her father being involved and they’d been on their way to a picnic when they’d heard about the meeting (the basket was perched precariously on the table, sandwiches divided equally amongst the people), while Jehan and Feuilly (who, Enjolras had been surprised to learn, having fallen out of contact with him when he graduated high school without access to a phone, worked with Jehan’s roommate) had brought the aforementioned roommate, sitting there with a sardonic smirk and two other tagalongs. The trio had been introduced to em as ‘R, Bossuet and Joly, no, that’s Joly, that’s Bossuet, oh, for fuck’s sake…’. It was an impressive turnout, and Enjolras was temporarily overcome with the strangest feeling, as if this ragtag group of young adults and celestials was somehow meant to be, as if everything had been leading to this. Combeferre slipped a pile of notecards to Enjolras when ey didn’t immediately speak. Enjolras shook eir head.

“As you all know,” ey began, straightening up. “A crater was discovered yesterday morning in the field of a farmer and his son. What you may not all know is precisely what caused it.” Enjolras’ eyes temporarily found Cosette, Joly and Bossuet. Were they aware of the circumstances of the meeting? “Stars. Stars who have fallen from the sky, for whatever reason, and are living on Earth. I know it sounds like a crackpot theory, but it isn’t, and it’s true.”

About half of the congregation sat up, and if Enjolras were psychic, ey would have known their reasons for doing so, but alas ey were not, and so ey did not know their reasons for sitting up. Only one person did not; Jehan’s roommate instead sank down in his seat, glow turning inwards and darker, like an implosion, similar to the scene in the first Lord of the Rings movie that Courfeyrac had made em watch, with Lady Galadriel’s ethereal light becoming inverted and almost blue, lighting her up _wrong_ , distorted, and…upset.

Enjolras cleared eir throat, and continued. “I know that not all of you are stars, but I also know that some of us can see the light, the glow of stars, and I know that some of you are. I’m not going to out you, and I’m not going to pressure you into coming forward. Unfortunately, there has been talk in government of making that happen, of making stars come forward and identify themselves. Historically, public identification of those who are different has _not_ been beneficial to society, and only conducts hate and injustice, so it is for this reason that I propose we make the addition of rights for stars to our agenda. We need to step forward and take a stand, and act before the injustice begins, because if we wait until then, it will be too late.” Ey paused. “I suggest everybody thinks on the issue for a while, and asks their questions to any star willing to come forward and discuss the implications of any action taken or not taken, and at the next meeting in half a week’s time, we will convene again to take a vote. Now, I am not a star. So I hand you over to my very…dear…friend, Courfeyrac.”

Courfeyrac smiled up at Enjolras and got to his feet, his hand grazing Enjolras’ back as ey sat down.

“Thank you, Enjolras,” he murmured, before turning to face everyone. He took a deep breath, faltering for a split-second, but with Combeferre on his left and Enjolras on his right, he drew strength from their presence, and his glow brightened. “Next Valentine’s day, I will have lived here, in America, for a century. I know, I know, I don’t look a day over twenty-four, but what can I say? I moisturise.” He grinned at the light chuckle that his jest had prompted. “The point being that yeah, there’s a crater somewhere outside New York that’s probably been filled in by now with my name on it. I’m a star. Kind of hard to follow Enjolras on the speech-making front, but I’m here if any of you non-celestial folk have any questions about what we might be doing, and I’m here if any of the stars around here want to go ahead and help me to put down some thoughts about what we’re going to do here if we decide to put focus on fallen stars in our agenda. Our proposals and goals should be laid out by stars, the very people it’d be affecting, but I’m only one guy, people, some of you’ll have different ideas and perspectives, so the more of us that get involved the better. Just come talk to me if you want to get involved, or email me, text me, whatever, just…contact me. You can be completely anonymous if that’s what you want, but seriously, I can’t do this on my own.”

“Hey now,” Bahorel piped up, physically sprawled across all of the new arrivals except for Cosette, who simply looked contemplative. “You say that as if nineties pacts mean nothing to you, broski. Friends who see friends in neon snapbacks are friends who don’t leave friends hanging. You have my sword, nerdface.” He raised his glass.

Marius coughed at the quote, spluttering a little and casting a sidelong glance to Cosette, who simply squeezed his hand in encouragement. “You have my bow,” he wheezed, still trying to recover from the impromptu choking.

“And my axe,” Jehan finished the reference, finishing off a little braid in Bahorel’s hair. Jehan’s roommate, the R fellow, muttered a little, sinking down into his seat and glancing, with an unreadable expression, at their fearsome leader and Jehan nudged him with nir shoulder, at which point he dropped the sullen demeanour and tried to brighten. Unsuccessfully, Courfeyrac could add, but he didn’t, and he didn’t blame him for not coming forward. It was a lot to ask.

Courfeyrac nodded. “So be it,” he said, mock-solemnly, before his expression disintegrated and he sighed, completely and utterly content. They could do this. This was doable.

(He didn’t have to do this alone.)

* * *

_7 th of June, 17:46 (GMT+1)_

“I’m not a complete and utter idiot, guys,” groaned Musichetta in heavily accented English. “I know you can take care of yourselves, I’m just worried that if this _goes_ anywhere, you might not be able to.”

Protests from Courfeyrac, Marius and Bahorel echoed through the speakers on her laptop as she carried it between rooms in her little ground-floor flat, heading for her bedroom and yanking a suitcase out from behind the door.

“Chetta, what if you get stuck here?” cried Marius.

Musichetta shook her head, setting the laptop down on her bed and grinning at the boys she’d been in contact with since the ‘90s. “Then I’ll be with my boys. Certainly took us long enough to all get together. It’s as good a time as any. Besides, I thought you said your couple friends were interested in my delightful company.”

On the other side of the camera, Bahorel silently lamented the loss of a decade-old promise to be each other’s back-ups.

“But fine,” she continued. “If you’re all so worried, I can hold out a little longer before coming to your aid.”

* * *

_5 th of November, 15:28 (GMT-5)_

‘I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.”

It was on this day, precisely one-hundred-and-forty-nine-thousand-and-nine days ago, or twenty-one-thousand-two-hundred-and-eighty-seven weeks ago, or more simply, four hundred and eight years ago, that Bahorel had decided it would be a worthwhile enterprise to fall from the sky. He had been on Earth for a long, long time, always telling himself that the second things began to get dull, he would abandon this rock and return to the sky, having had his fill. Every time things seemed to be quieting down, however, something happened; the English civil war, the beheadings of various rulers, the rebellion of the Scots, the rebellion of the Americans, the American civil war… People changed, times changed, and revolutions changed with them. It really was quite fantastic, he concluded, and everything was always new, in its own way, with new experiences, new situations, and new trends. Of course, the past was always echoed, but it was the contemporary evolution that fascinated him.

It was on this day that he realised, amidst flares and shouts and fists and riot police, that things would never echo the same way as they had before. This was a unique experience, unlike any other revolution evolved through his time on the planet. The anger was the same, but directed at _him_. Or it felt that way, anyway.

Live debates from politician to politician regarding the stars were a common occurrence on television screens around the globe. It seemed almost as if everybody was speaking out against stars (‘Stars who’ve come forward admitted the stars have some sway on us – shouldn’t they be held accountable for allowing our poverty and strife?’), and it felt…personal. He couldn’t help it. It did. They were trying, Les Amis were trying, and they weren’t the only ones; there was the Star Equality Association, and there was the People Sky Alliance, and a few others that he could have named if he were not currently trying to keep some bastard’s knife away from his face, but it wasn’t enough, and if there was one thing he’d learned from living with people, it was that they tended to buy anything that shifted the blame. Even here, at this, a peaceful protest, Bahorel just _knew_ that the news would say it had been one of the supporters of the cause who threw the first punch.

It was personal, he was involved in this one, and this affected _him_. He knew he kept coming back to that, but it was an epiphany of sorts.

Every revolution, he thought, catching sight of Jehan and Grantaire trying to break through the crowd to him, felt like a turning point to those it directly affected.

This was their revolution.

Bahorel grinned, teeth bloody as he jutted his chin out, and, flanked by his friends, fought for their right to be here.

* * *

_20:29 (GMT-5)_

The second protests had begun to turn sour, Les Amis de l’ABC had split off from the university, holding meetings and planning demonstrations at the home of Courfeyrac, Marius and Bahorel instead.

Courfeyrac dragged in a deep breath through his teeth as he tried to stand on both legs, and his eyes shut, arm coming out. Combeferre immediately steadied him and he opened his eyes, giving him a grateful look as he hobbled to the kitchen with his help. Enjolras stood in the door, holding a glass filled with ice to eir temple and Courfeyrac sighed a little.

“It’s not your fault, chief,” Combeferre spoke for him, and Courfeyrac nodded in agreement, offering Enjolras his hand. Enjolras took it and he squeezed eir fingers silently.

“I should have seen the signs,” ey mumbled, stepping to the side and letting go of Courfeyrac’s hand so Combeferre could lead him to the kitchen table, where Joly was currently patching up Bossuet with a tender look in her eyes. Courfeyrac tried to protest leaving Enjolras in the door, but Combeferre shook his head silently. They could address Enjolras’ guilt later. Holding an ice pack on his wrist, Feuilly stood up and hooked his ankle around the leg of the chair he was vacating and pulling it out for Courfeyrac to sit down.

Combeferre deposited Courfeyrac in the chair and swept the room with his eyes. He beckoned Cosette over, speaking in a low voice and pretending not to notice when Enjolras immediately gravitated to Courfeyrac’s side. “We’re down four people.”

She had matured a lot over the past few months, sneaking out to come to meetings and planning sessions and running point on keeping up with where everybody was supposed to be at what time. Combeferre liked her; she had taken to this with a surprisingly level head and it was always nice to have someone else around to mother the revolutionaries when they refused to sit still, unafraid to (true story) grip them by the ear when they got horrendously off topic (for example, during a truly momentous shitfest between Enjolras and Grantaire, something to do with social relations and ducks?).

“Marius is at the store, we’re low on antiseptic cream and ice,” Cosette reported, unable to keep the fond smile from her face when talking about Marius. She cleared her throat, though, perfect eyebrows coming together as she continued in quieter tones, “No word from Bahorel, Jehan or R.”

Combeferre pursed his lips, looking around the group again. “They’re not answering their phones?”

She shook her head. “Or texts.”

“Keep trying, I’ll check with their other friends,” he instructed. She nodded, and he stole another glance around the room filled with his unbeaten albeit battered friends.

* * *

Not expecting the repetitive and quickly growing annoyance that was a continuous stream of knocking and kicks at his door, Montparnasse glowered at it until Éponine got up to answer it, Claquesous catching her wrist with a discouraging look. She twisted out of their grip with a scowl.

Montparnasse wasn’t going to answer it, but one of the people knocking on the door sounded familiar. He groaned, straightened his tie and strode over to the peephole, ignoring Claquesous’ protests as Éponine came with him to see what all the fuss was about.

“Fucking shit…” he breathed as soon as he took stock of their visitors, and wasted no time in unlocking and opening the door, only for three battered stars to tumble in.

“Hi,” opened a black-eyed Grantaire with a split lip. He spoke in a rush, “I really fuckin’ hope you don’t mind, it’s just that you’re closer than our friend’s and it’s kinda fuckin’ awful out there. This is Jehan and Bahorel, guys, this is Mont’s place, and this is Ep.”

“We’ve met,” said Montparnasse coolly, regarding Bahorel, who only then seemed to notice him, and looked at him through unfocused eyes. “And you’re concussed. Is that even possible?”

Bahorel put a finger to his lips. “Shh, roomie, not so loud…Just don’t shoot me and we’ll be juuuuust fine.”

“Please, shooting you is _so_ eighteenth-century,” Montparnasse muttered, removing his tie and hanging it up on the hat stand before he faux-reluctantly put an arm around Bahorel and helped this Jehan person lug him to the couch, where they dropped him.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Grantaire and Éponine exchange befuddled glances, and he exhaled a long-suffering sigh. And here he’d thought he’d never see his old…companion again. Claquesous’ eyes were burning a hole in the back of his head as he thrust a box of tissues into Bahorel’s hands and Jehan immediately sought to clean up the blood. Vexing as this was, it was an old couch anyway.

Éponine’s phone started to ring.

Montparnasse turned towards Grantaire, who shrugged helplessly, explaining, “I did say that fighting for our rights would only end in blood.”

And in that moment, Montparnasse wished oh so very hard, and not for the first time, that he had barricaded the door of his home in the forest.

* * *

_25 th of November, 09:03 (GMT-5)_

Les Amis de l’ABC were lined up in Courfeyrac-selected uniforms; shirt and tie with sunglasses. He had taken to the task with gusto and a relieved exhale of joviality that they sorely needed. It had been hard for them.

Musichetta walked through the airport gate like a breath of fresh air. Courfeyrac stepped forward and took her carry-on for her, and she fell into Les Amis like the family they had become to anybody who would have them. They knew who she was, and she knew them.

No more hiding, echoed Enjolras in a later speech. Plans would go ahead for the coming year.

“Christmas first!” came the resounding response.

* * *

_24 th of December, 18:48 (GMT-5)_

“Elf!”

“How the Grinch stole Christmas!”

“The Nightmare Before Christmas!”

“Elf!”

“You said Elf twice, sweetie,” Musichetta murmured to Joly from Bossuet’s knee. Yes, Bossuet had been gifted with the opportunity to wear a fake beard for the occasion. No, he was not complaining.

Joly tossed her hair back. “That would be because Elf is a glorious production of awesomeness,” she stated, probably having had just a little too much eggnog.

“Y’know, I was there for the great Christmas Truce of nineteen-fourteen,” declared Courfeyrac, puffing up in the face of a threat to his historical name-drops, also known as Bahorel.

His competition, commonly known as Bahorel, also puffed up. “Yeah? Well, I knew the guy who transcribed today’s melody of O Come All Ye Faithful.”

“Oh, please, like that could beat crossing no-man’s land to give cigarettes to Fritz.”

“Charles Baudelaire gave me a skull for Christmas one year,” Jehan chimed in, decked out in a truly horrendous sweater with some form of monster hybrid of Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer and an elf on the front.

After a moment of stunned silence, Combeferre cleared his throat. “And Jehan wins the round!”

Grantaire hid a smile in his eggnog, turning his eyes downwards and away from the halo-headed starchild immediately opposite him, who, he had noted, had been watching the lively debate across Couriusrel’s kitchen table with a slightly softer expression than eir usual severity. He caught himself before he could spiral further – why didn’t ey look at him like that (because he was nothing but a letdown that didn’t even think they could succeed), why was he still fuckin’…pining (because he was nothing if not masochistic). The one question he didn’t ask himself was why Enjolras hated him. He knew the answer.

“I know it’s rich coming from me, R, but you need to lighten up,” Jehan appeared at his shoulder and Grantaire glanced up at nem. “It’s Christmas, mon ami.” Ne slipped him a small envelope. “Merry festivities.”

He didn’t open it.

Enjolras cleared eir throat, grabbing the attention of everybody in the kitchen. Ey seemed surprised when everybody turned to face em, expecting a speech of some form, regarding merriment and the (even more) serious times that were sure to be ahead. “What?” ey blinked. “Fudge went down the wrong way.”

Bahorel groaned. “Chief…Chief, you really gotta stop doing that.”

Here, were this a scene from a Christmas TV special, the camera would pan around the room, light-hearted titters from the room’s occupants overlaying the sound of quiet violins and sleigh bells as the sparkly hues and shine of tinsel and tacky baubles came and went from the camera’s frame. The scene would shift to the living room, with Feuilly dozing on the hearth in front of the fire, using Marius’ thigh as a pillow while Joly, Bossuet and Musichetta settled down to watch The Santa Claus. Here, the editor would have a choice; to send the camera towards the fake fire in the hearth, or to send it through the window and pan up to the night sky. It was almost Christmas.

* * *

_21:02 (GMT-5)_

Éponine was making her way downtown, walking fast, faces passed and she was homebound.

“Hey, wait! Wait! Wait up! Do you have any idea how hard it is to run on ice in heels?!”

Éponine walked faster, putting her head down.

There were a few almost inaudible murmurs before Cosette’s tinkling voice started up again. “Papa, father, I’ll only be a moment, I know her, she’s a friend of Les Amis’!”

Damn Les Amis, damn them and their love for group selfies, damn them to hell.

The first time she’d seen Cosette, and been sure of who she was, Éponine had shrunk away, putting her hood up and slinking away from the general company of, well, everyone. Montparnasse had given her a tasteful wolf bracelet for Christmas (he was so hard to by for, she’d resorted to socks and the receipts). It was the one time of the year that they gifted each other with honest belongings, a tradition that had started years ago. They would allow themselves this luxury. She pressed her thumb to the nose of the wolf, and turned to face the girl she had tortured as a child.

“Cosette,” she breathed, finally looking her over. Photographs were one thing, but to see her, to see… She was unbroken. Éponine offered her a teensy smile. “You look good.”

Cosette placed one foot in front of the other, poised but with an air of awkwardness, as if she hadn’t fully grown into the pastel shades of her duffle coat. “So do you. Listen, I—I just wanted to say… You always run away before I can… I guess what I’m trying to…”

Éponine watched the snow landing on the ground between them, a distance of only a few feet. She looked at their shoes. They could easily each wear the other’s footwear.

“Here.”

She looked up.

Cosette was holding out a little blue envelope. Éponine carefully reached out and took the proffered packet, opening it and pulling out the card, an invitation. “A New Year’s party?” she murmured, heavy eyeliner somewhat ruining the effect of her befuddlement.

“Mhm,” nodded Cosette, clasping her hands in front of herself. “You’re invited. It’s at my house. Everyone else is coming, I… I’d like it if you were there.”

“But I—“

“You hurt me. Your family hurt me, as a child. But I’m a big girl now, I’ve had some help and I’m coming to terms with things. I might not be able to forget everything that happened…but I’d like to forgive you.” Cosette held her hand out for Éponine to shake, and Éponine’s mitten trembled as she did so. Satisfied, Cosette swung their hands back and forth and offered her a shy smile. “Turn the envelope upside down, it’s my favourite part.”

Tucking the invitation into her pocket, Éponine did so. Hundreds of tiny, iridescent snowflakes fell and mingled with the ones that tumbled from the sky, fluttering and twirling on their short journey to the ice between them, where they landed in a small mound of sparkles and plastic snowflakes. Éponine let out a noise she hadn’t for years; she giggled, flushing pink and putting the tip of her mitten to her mouth.

“I think it’s my favourite part too,” she admitted.

* * *

_New Year’s Eve, 23:48 (GMT-5)_

“Ah, c’mon, Achilles,” Grantaire half-pleaded, accent shining through stronger than ever, as it did when stress got to him. “It’s going to be be your birthday in literally twelve minutes, you will be twenty-one, _please_ , I do not wish to argue with you on your _birthday_.”

“Really?” Enjolras raised an eyebrow, following him outside onto the fire escape. “Well, that certainly makes a change. Maybe I ought to turn twenty-one more often; then we might actually cover what we plan to cover in our meetings.”

Grantaire’s hand shook as he lit up a cigarette, offering one to Enjolras, who declined with a shake of eir head. Putting the lighter back in his pocket, he muttered something in French before turning to face Enjolras again. With a surge of surprising indignation that visibly manifested in an ethereal white flare that died as quickly as it grew, he took a deep breath. “You’re welcome. Your arguments have never been tighter.”

Enjolras’ eyebrows rose. “You do realise that structured discourse only accounts for about half of your interjections, right?”

“Right.” Grantaire didn’t continue, and his light didn’t change; he glowed as dully and inwardly as he usually did. He didn’t say anything for a good few minutes.

“Aren’t you going to ask me?” Enjolras eventually prodded, crossing eir arms against the cold.

Grantaire sighed; that arm-cross meant one thing, and that was that he had offended the chief again. “Ask you what?” he muttered, demeanour sullen.

“What the other half is?”

“No.” The answer came too quick. It startled Enjolras.

Eir voice was a little lost when ey asked, “Why not?” Enjolras couldn’t do anything for Grantaire if Grantaire didn’t give em anything to go on.

Grantaire shrugged. He couldn’t explain anything to Enjolras if Enjolras didn’t tell him what ey was looking for.

Enjolras trembled a little as ey let out a frustrated huff, stamping eir feet. “You _are_ one of the most incorrigible, contrary, _frustrating_ individuals I have _ever_ met. You say you don’t believe in anything, but you’re still here. You say you’re not useless, but you don’t _apply_ yourself. You know you could help, you’re a _star_ who’s seen a _lot_ , and you _don’t_. I don’t understand you, if only you would just listen to me—“

The clock chimed twelve, fireworks lighting up the night, and Enjolras froze, inches from Grantaire, whose breathing had only grown shallow throughout Enjolras’ outburst, during which ey had stepped closer and closer and— He could feel Enjolras’ breath on his _mouth_. The clock rung out, whoops of joy and laughter coming from indoors and outdoors as the firework display continued.

Then there was a mouth on his mouth and Grantaire’s eyes widened and he froze and he stayed like that, until Enjolras pulled back, looking for the life of em like ey were as confused as he was.

One particular laugh from inside stood out – Courfeyrac’s. And Grantaire felt a little queasy. Courfeyrac was his _friend_ , Courfeyrac had let him help under the radar with the star agenda, Courfeyrac had been nothing short of brotherly towards him and this was how he repaid him? By letting his beloved kiss him?

All of Grantaire’s anxieties whooshed into his lungs as the air rushed out, and he put the cigarette out, descending the fire escape and fleeing.

Enjolras watched him go with a stunned expression, feeling eir tongue come out and taste eir lips. Nicotine.

“Happy birthday!” came the chorus from the window. Enjolras spun to look, immediately seeking out Courfeyrac. Courfeyrac nodded back at em with a smile that said simply, ‘I know, it’s okay’.

* * *

**2014**

_1 st of May, 09:01 (GMT-5)_

“It’s up, it’s live!” Feuilly was the first one to spot it, though they’d all been taking turns to refresh their respective online stations so as to not miss the big announcement. Marius scrabbled under the couch for the remote, and finding it, turned the TV on and to a news channel, any news channel. It didn’t matter which one. They’d all made it perfectly clear that, regardless of their station’s biases, this was the scoop of the century.

“—Government officials are now calling for immediate action in what they have revealed to journalists, as the Star Registration Act.” Musichetta went to turn it off, but Courfeyrac stayed her hand with a sombre shake of his head. “The invasion of the stars was described as an act of terror akin to reds underneath the bed, and if our children are to sleep safely at night, it will be with the knowledge that they are safe from extra-terrestrial threat, a threat that will directly be looked into. Work to officially pass the Act will commence on, as colloquialism dictates, Star Day.  And now, the weather…”

Some of Les Amis & Co. stared blankly at the screen. Some knocked seats over in their rush to stand and make their voices heard. Some repeatedly asserted their disbelief. One of the Co. merely swallowed the lump in her throat and fiddled with her bracelet. Oh…

* * *

“No matter what happens, you can’t come forward,” Éponine blustered as she strode into Montparnasse’s flat. “I don’t care what they do, what they say, and how they might find out, you are not coming forward.”

Montparnasse pressed the mute button on the TV remote, Claquesous a silent shadow beside him. He got to his feet and his shadow didn’t follow as he met Éponine before she could come to him.

“That’s my decision, Ponine,” he reminded her, putting a hand to his hair. “Believe it or not, I have actually been putting some thought into the subject.”

She glared defiantly up at him until he sat on the coffee table, and she stood in front of him with folded arms.

“I just mean—“

“I know what you mean,” she interrupted him. “You find that the easiest way to stay out of trouble with us _humans_ is to give us what we want. Oh, I’ve pieced together the story; I’m not a complete fucking _moron_ like Gwee is. Ever since the stars told you that you couldn’t go back, you’ve pandered to us. Hidden away in the forest, sneaking around cities at the dead of night, even that _redhead_ _guy_ from Les Amis, the one who looks at you like he knows you? You gave the humans what they wanted, and you always have, and you _can’t_. They don’t want you to fit in, they want _you_.”

Montparnasse opened his mouth to speak.

“I’m not done!” Éponine’s voice rose in pitch from its usual apathetic undertones. It was scary. “You know what’ll happen if they get you? They’ll brand you. They’ll round you up. They’ll make sure everyone and everything knows what you are, and what you are is their _bitch_. And didn’t you hear what they said? They want to _look into the threat_. You do realise they mean that literally, right? They _literally_ want to look _inside_ you.”

Montparnasse did not open his mouth to speak now, but remembered watching Earth one night, centuries ago, when a Pharaoh had dared to defy the sway of the stars and every first-born child in the land was struck down. Whatever the humans were up to at the same time was of no consequence. They didn’t care. Things had eased up since then…but only marginally.

He probably looked like he was about to speak, because Éponine put her hand on his mouth and glared at him until he sighed through his nose.

“The girl’s right, you know,” Claquesous finally spoke up from the couch. “People don’t have the best track record with forced public identification of differences. It’s better for you—it’s better for us if you don’t comply, regardless of the law’s passing.”

Montparnasse’s jaw clenched. Then he nodded.

* * *

_29 th of May, 06:59 (GMT-5)_

This had always been the plan, for Courfeyrac. He lay awake before the alarm went off, brushing blond hairs from Enjolras’ forehead and sighed a little. There was less than a week to go.

When he had fallen, he’d wanted to experience the world for himself, with the excitement of new ideas and fresh wonders that looked _so much bigger_ up close. He’d found himself the centre of many an attention, the anchor to many a lost soul, and he’d found his calling. It was okay that he lost his way. This was his chance to _help_ , for once, and he’d be damned if he didn’t show the people how much some of them cared.

* * *

Bahorel, on the other hand, was slowly regaining consciousness in Feuilly, Jehan and Grantaire’s bathtub. Last night had been wild from start to finish, as ought to have been evident from the husky slippers that had found their way onto his feet, and he smiled in a rare moment of contentment, inadvertently lighting up the room and illuminating shaving foam that covered the walls from top to bottom.

A lot of what he did was for shits and giggles, it was true, but if he was being truly honest with himself? He wouldn’t regret the next few weeks one single bit.

* * *

At this precise moment in time, Marius was kissing Cosette goodbye, sitting on the window ledge and committing this moment to memory before he had to descend the tree by her window. He could have gone home months ago. All he wanted was to stay.

* * *

In the other room, Jean Valjean was already awake. He’d come a long way in over eighty years, and he watched Gregory pull on his socks with a slightly saddened look in his eye. He had lost so much, he’d lost the love of his life and he’d lost his little girl. A giggle came from Cosette’s room and Gregory muttered something about not letting some star from god knows where corrupt their little girl, and Valjean’s sadness was washed away like a tide on a beach.

“Similar to how I corrupted you?” teased Jean Valjean, nudging him with his foot.

Gregory didn’t skip a beat, “Exactly the same.” There was no malice to it.

Things had changed for Jean Valjean.

* * *

Wondering why ne had about a billion little doodles of dicks on nir person was not high up on Jehan’s list of musings at the moment, as ne was awakened by the sound of an honest-to-god rooster. The world was like this, ne clucked to nemself, admiring a particularly detailed penis on the inside of nir wrist. It was filled with such beauty and despair, and words that could stir someone to the depths of their very soul…and sometimes one was woken up by the sound of a fucking chicken in the morning.

In the city centre.

Not that Jehan was complaining of course, no, not at all. In fact, if the world were a better place for all its citizens…Jehan wouldn’t change a thing.

* * *

Grantaire woke up with a pen in his hand.

* * *

_Star Day – 5 th of June, 11:00 (GMT-5)_

Enjolras stepped up onto the stage, surveying the turnout. People were still arriving, filling up the gaps in the crowd however and wherever they could. Families hung from windows, people hefted signs supporting their cause, and in the crowd, ey could physically see the light emanating, growing stronger and stronger as more and more stars realised that they were not alone.

Ey cleared eir throat into the microphone. Silence fell, but energy thrummed through all these people, rallying around each other, the people they cared about, the people they barely knew.

“Citizens,” ey began. “Do you picture the future? Do _we_ picture the future? No. No, we do not. The future is insurmountable; we cannot picture it, for we do not know what it holds. But we, the people of Earth, we can _dream_. Would you not dream of a future where the light returns to us, when we have lived in darkness, unbelieving of walking torches and refusing to acknowledge that light in the shadows is _good_?

“Today, the government makes plans to limit that light, to _demand_ that our neighbours; our friends, our partners and our fellow citizens should step forward and adhere to their every whim. They say they only ask that stars identify themselves, and it may begin this way, but it certainly won’t stay as such. Already, unjust and irrational generalisations about stars have been made; where were they when we starved, where were they when we lost hope, where were they when we were dying in the streets? We pushed them away with our disbelief, and we blame them for not stepping in to help us, after we tried to sever ties, which, by the way, people are doing again – I know people, we _all_ know people, who physically left the country as soon as they heard that stars are real. These are, already, the first stages of prejudice. Throw away your whispers of safety; compulsory public identification does _nothing_ for anybody, except for enable systematic discrimination against stars and open the door for future prejudices. The might of the stars is great. If we attack them, which identification under our current government _will_ lead to, we will have brought any retaliation upon ourselves. We, the citizens of our country, _cannot_ allow the government that we vote for to pass anything that allows them to force identification without proper protection for stars. We should not. And we will not.

“These stars? They have been a part of our communities for longer than we have, we are made in _their_ image, and if _they_ are _here_ , it is for a reason. I do not expect to convince anybody of this on my own. I am not a star. However, I happen to know a few of them. These are their stories. I cannot make you listen to them, and I do not expect their words to fully represent an entire people, but I ask you to try to understand, if not for the sake of the stars, then for your society, before it is ripped apart by prejudice.”

* * *

“I had a friend once. Yeah, I know, kinda lame that I start my big speech with such a Disney message, huh? But y’know what? I don’t really care. I came to America when you lot were fighting England and that for your independence, the uh… Revolutionary War, if you will. I started on England’s side, I’d been living there since that bloke tried to blow up parliament, seemed like a good idea at the time – living there, not blowing up parliament. If I could get anything on a grave, it’d be ‘it seemed like a good idea at the time’, and for the most part, it’d be right, as in I wind up regretting things after I do them a lot, I mean, eighties hair? I regret the eighties. Something tells me I’d have regretted the eighties a lot more if I didn’t have my mate, mind. Later plural, but at the time it was just the one. Yeah, I know, I’m a nerd.

“Anyway, I met him when I defected from England, started fighting for America; I guess I just figured it was the land of opportunity. England used to be like that. Then Cromwell happened and Christmas went away and even when Charles came back, it weren’t the same; folk’s ideas were changing even more. Personally, I blame politicians, but hey, I guess if the peoples’ ideas change, there isn’t much anyone can do about it, not without interfering in what people want. My friend, he…he was a star as well, I walked into his house running away from the English and he literally shot me in the chest. Twat ruined my favourite shirt, he did.

“I made him fight with me, not in that war, in the next one, the Civil one. He bloody complained all through it, I remember he said, he said to me… ‘Why should we help them? Our family won’t help them, so why should we?’ I remember that. I actually uh…forgot all about it until the riots a few months ago. Can’t even remember what I told him back then, probably just smacked him on the back and told him to get his arse in gear. But if I could answer him now? I’d tell him that nobody is obligated to help anybody else. Of course they’re not. That’s not how people work, half the time. That’s not how stars work. But when you’re revolting for yourself, you kind of wish you weren’t doing it alone, and that’s why we should help people. Because even if you justify your actions as ‘it seemed like a good idea at the time’, or ‘I’m doing it for shits and giggles’, your actions, your _story_ affects others, even indirectly. Might as well make it a good one.”

* * *

“Your world is beautiful. That was my first thought, upon falling. There was this cliff in France, and all I wanted was to stand upon it and let the wind lash my hair back and forth, from my mouth to my eyes. It was really, truly and quite damp, to be perfectly honest with you. I didn’t leave that cliff for at least a week. That isn’t something you have in the sky, that raw, human sensation of…well, sensation. It’s cold up there, to the core of your being and you look around you, and you know you can help, but…you’re too distant to see why you ought to. It’s very similar to seeing a plight millions of miles away on the television screen, and knowing all you have to do is pick up the phone to help, but there are a billion other factors in the way of you doing so. Some people don’t want your help. Others will step in in your place. Any help you do send will be gobbled up and regurgitated, twisted, through the system. Oftentimes, the only way you feel you truly can help is to get out there. I like your world, but it’s my world too.

“Ought I really to be held accountable for my family’s lack of action? I mean nobody any harm, all I wish is to stand on that cliff and help people as I do so. I built a life here. I earned my place at university through the work of my friends and I – jobs that we earned honestly and without the influence of our family. I don’t just reside here; I have a life here. I volunteer, I work, I study, I feel, I communicate, I speak, and I bleed. My friend will not tell you this, and I asked him if I could – he said yes, but I sat next to his hospital bed for hours after he did such damage to himself I actually wondered if it could be true, if mortality touches us as it does you. I fought in battles and wars, and I have examined death in only the most poetic of senses, but that? That was the singular most terrifying experience of my time here.

“Sensation… Human sensation. It isn’t just human sensation. It’s the wind and the trees, howling as one, it’s birds in the morning and crickets at night. It’s a bright light hurtling through the sky, burning, yearning for the same sensation you experience. I would like to say that I found it. But how can I know? How can any of us know? I put thought into a theory; one initially proposed by a very Wilde man to me, that sensation is best experienced without the influence of others, when, and only when, we experience it _with_ others, in all its forms – good, bad, beautiful, wonderful sensation. It’s an intriguing notion in its own way. Just think about it.”

* * *

“This was my idea. You know, get as many of the stars that we know would be willing to do so to stand up here and tell their stories. Truthfully, the main reason I came up with this was because I was watching Doctor Who when I was thinking about how we could get people to listen, and the line about everybody being stories in the end happened to come up. So, here’s my story.

“I don’t really like using the word ‘falling’ to describe how a lot of us come here. I mean, sure, some of us do, but not all of us. Falling implies a lack of control, but I, for one, knew exactly what I was doing. I landed on Valentine’s Day, the year the Great War broke out. I was only in New York for a few months until everyone I knew and I enlisted, humans, stars, we all did it. I mean, we live here; of course we’re going to fight. Sure, most of us could have left when we had the chance, but there’s something awfully mesmerising about humans, the way you rally around a cause. It makes you want to be a part of it.

“I guess it was then that I realised that I’m, we, the stars, we’re in a unique position here. Like my friend said, he’s been shot in the chest. I was at the Normandy Landings. I’ve been subject to mustard gas, drowning, and bullet wounds, even explosions… if I were human? I would have died a long time ago. Bouncing back from a lot of things is what puts us in a unique position; it can freak us out, or it can give us the confidence to be there when people need us to be.

“It’s hard. I’m not saying it’s easy, because it’s not. I’ve seen a lot of good men – good people lose themselves, in the Depression, _to_ depression, to no-man’s land, to vices, to corruption, to chaos, to solitude… What makes us unique, as stars, is that even if we lose ourselves, our light can come back. I’m proud to say that that light is what’s responsible for the continuing bravery of many people, specifically those who can see our glitz, and why? Because when people see some stranger shining in the street, they tend to see what I see whenever I turn out the light at night. They tend to see that it’s not so dark. I, for one, can live with that.”

* * *

“When I was asked to do this, I said I would have to think about it. I didn’t have to think long. One reason for that is because my daughter asked me to do it, and I’m sure at least some of you know how hard it is to deny your little girl something like this. Another is because it felt like the right thing to do.

“When I was in the sky, I couldn’t do enough. It’s distant and cold, and you’re not encouraged to make waves. It wasn’t always like that, but when humans, when…you started putting more faith in yourselves, we realised that it was time to let you make your own decisions and take responsibility for your own actions. It was time for us to realise that you’d grown up. I tried to help, but there wasn’t much I could do but help out a few people here and there. It was nineteen thirty-one when I fell in Ohio. The first thing I did was to volunteer at a homeless shelter.

“I carried on like this for decades, nothing changed. Society grew more progressive and I couldn’t help but feel proud. I had done nothing to tip the balance, not this time; it was all you. You made the world a slightly better place and we didn’t lift a finger. It was like seeing my daughter walk towards me one day, when the night before, she’d only crawled.

“This isn’t about parenting. This is about independence. I know that there are stars up there that’re aloof, regarding your lives in the same way that you watch TV. But there are stars who felt the same way I did at the ‘sixty-three March on Washington, the overwhelming pride and joy at seeing people, at seeing humanity blossom.”

* * *

“I—I don’t know what to say… I didn’t mean to come here. Everyone you heard before, they made the decision, I—I just fell. There was a girl, in London. It was during the Blitz, and when she died, I felt so strongly that I had to be with her, it _hurt_ , so I fell. That hurt too, like being burned inside out and remade. I think it’s different if you choose it.

“There wasn’t anybody there. Not for me. We’re not supposed to be alone when we land, especially if it’s not our choice. It’s different for us when we land as well, we… It’s like something breaks in us when we feel the pull; we glow, but we… There’s a glow, a particularly nice glow that only appears when we’re absolutely serene, at peace with our direction, with ourselves, even if our actions or thoughts don’t match up with that. When you choose to fall, that’s stripped from you until you find it again.

“I never thought I’d find it.

“Would it be awful and cheesy of me to say that friendship and romantic comedies probably helped me not to lose hope? I don’t care. Friendship and romantic comedies helped me not to lose hope. And now, I’ve got my glow back. I’m in love. She’s got these freckles, and these eyes, and this hair. Her hair’s like a brown cloud, but the flyaway hairs catch the light, so it’s like a halo. She can run in heels, and she reads the strangest books, and her eyeliner wings are always even. Stars don’t sleep much, but I would gladly hold her in my arms every night until we die. Yes. We. We talked about it. I could go home anytime I wanted now, but I don’t care. I’m in love. I would gladly give up my place in the sky to be with her on a permanent basis. And I don’t care if that means I have to formally register, or deal with graffiti on my car, or fight for my right to be here. It’s true love, and we will always find each other.”

* * *

“Shit, I—Fuck—Only two seconds in and I already blew the whole damn thing. Okay, sorry, let’s start over… I don’t have much faith in humanity. I know that that’s probably not going to help the cause, but Cou—…my friend said it was important to get a bunch of different perspectives so…here goes.

“It was the eighties, and the Berlin Wall was up. I didn’t mean to fall. I just… People were hurting, people were in _pain_ , and I felt like it had to be done. I had to help. Someone did, my family wasn’t doing shit, so I had to try and accomplish something. But I still didn’t mean to fall. There was this family that I watched, they tried to get to the West side and they were—They—… I fell, into the English Channel. Like my friend said, if you don’t choose to fall, you can’t go back. I…still can’t go back.

“I tried to help, I really did, but every time I tried, it was pointless. Nothing got better, not even when we came to America. Every time I thought maybe this sunny spell would last, something would happen and I would hit rock bottom again. I have…no faith in humanity, not long-term. It’s a flaw, one of many, but it’s there that I digress.

“Some of you are okay, I guess. You’ll stop to put coins in a cup, you’ll give to charities, and you’ll split your sandwich with the kid on the bus. I’m not really one for optimistic rants; I’m rather a pessimist. I fell because of pain, and I’m too blinded by acquired misanthropy to see any change, though…I’m not saying I hate people. I simply don’t have faith in them, or stars. The world revolves, and continues spinning; capitalism doesn’t work because people are greedy, and communism doesn’t work for the same reason. Life? A cruel invention; one breaks their back to live. Yet, you persevere. You’re strong. I guess I have to hand that one to you.

“I have no faith in humanity, but I have just as little faith in stars. What I do have faith in is one person. They can…probably change the world. Maybe one day I’ll even get to go home.

“…

“This turned into a load of shit, I’m sorry. I do have personal convictions. I just don’t expect any of you to actually pay attention to them, and I certainly don’t want my views to influence yours. I don’t think registering is a good idea. This is our chance to make some waves. If we pass it up, then I’ll be right. I hate being right. Being right about this would fucking suck. Shit, sorry—”

* * *

_6 th of June_

Their protest was everywhere. It plastered newspapers, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. Heck, it was trending. They were being quoted. _Quoted_. The only times any of them had ever been quoted before were during mock arguments and debates.

Despite celebrations, however, Enjolras could not bear to lift eir cup to eir lips. There was still no word from the government, not even an informal tweet from a representative.

It would be simple enough; either they would push forth with plans for star registration, or they would not. There was no grey area, not for this.

All that any of them could do was wait and see.

Their stories had led them here.

**Epilogue – 2017**

“Citizens, I have gathered you here on this most auspicious night to announce my passions for overly red wardrobe choices…”

“Courfeyrac, are you making fun of me?” Enjolras prodded him in the side as the convened friends chortled in various states of mirth around the room.

It had been three years since the government repealed any trace of the star registration they’d hoped for. It was a needless proposition, really, considering stars had begun to come forth on their own, following the government’s decision.

Les Amis & Co. was thriving, as much as a social justice group turned official non-profit organisation could. Its members prospered too. What they were doing, individually? We’ll leave it up to the imagination.

As a group, they celebrated. A new law had just been passed; one that would allow any and all stars the same basic freedoms and liberties as humans, non-compulsory and without the requirement of celestial interference. They were real people now.

“To the government!” came the cry from Joly.

“Something I never thought I’d drink to, doctor,” Grantaire shook his head, but raised his glass anyway.

“Well,” Enjolras puffed up a little. “I knew they’d see reason.”

Combeferre snorted unbecomingly. “Just last week you said that you were moving to France because America sucked so bad.”

“Bull!”

“Ah, but I would gladly accompany you,” Jehan bowed gracefully, effect somewhat ruined by the brick pants and fluorescent green jumper. “I have missed those cliffs…”

The merriment of Les Amis & Co. was something they had stumbled upon, mostly through accidents and causality. It was not something that they regretted. It was not something that could have turned out any other way.

It’s been said that the threads of fate often intertwine, but rarely converge into one.

Perhaps all they need is a little stardust.


End file.
